Bear Witness to Murder by Meg Macy
My Rating: ★★
Sasha Silverman is preparing for Silver Hollow’s autumn events while managing her family’s business, the Silver Bear Shop. Everything seems to be going well until Holly Parker, Sasha’s high school rival, returns to town and becomes her new business rival. While trying to put old drama behind her, Sasha stumbles upon Holly’s assistant’s body, and quickly finds herself in the middle of a brand-new murder mystery. Unfortunately for Sasha, Holly still has it out for her, and she finds herself torn between Oktobear Fest and trying to get to the bottom of the murder and Holly’s undeserved rage.
I picked this book up thinking it’d be an adorable cozy but instead found myself dragging along with the story because of the slow pace. There are good things about it, but it’s too weighed down by a very large cast that pops in and out of the story. I found the sheer number of characters confusing, especially because so many of them didn’t have anything memorable about them. It made it hard to keep who was who straight at times, but I was able to keep the core cast straight for the most part, so I guess that’s what matters.
I love that Sasha family oriented, an animal lover, and hard worker. However, she’s a bland character that didn’t get me excited about reading the book. I enjoyed when she was hanging out with her sister because Mattie is such a vibrant character. Otherwise, it seemed like Sasha didn’t have much of a personality and was somewhat emotionless at times. I think the most emotion we really saw from her was toward the end of the book, but otherwise, her emotions seemed to be set on mute. I also didn’t find her motivations for getting involved in the murder mystery believable until one of her family members was being eyed as the killer.
I thoroughly enjoyed the drama that Holly brought to the table because she’s such a vile character who has her fingers in all the pies. Holly really gets the story going because she has so many sides to her, and none of them are good. Unfortunately, the real mystery was Holly’s beef with Sasha and not the murder. I never really understood why Holly zeroed in on Sasha in the first place. I wish that’s something that was cleared up in a way that made sense by the end of the book, but I’m okay with accepting the explanation that was given. Holly is a character that is unhinged in many ways, so it’s understandable that her motivations don’t necessarily make sense to anyone but her.
The relationship between Sasha’s ex-husband, Flynn, and her mother is an odd one. There were times where I wondered if her mother had an affair with Flynn and no one has figured it out yet. It’s so odd that she would favor her cheating former son-in-law over her own daughter down to trying to get them back together. It makes even less sense when I think about what her thoughts were on the situation, as revealed by Sasha’s father, but now she’s Flynn’s number one fan. I understand that she likes Flynn and has remained friends with him after the divorce, but the rest is just strange.
All in all, I enjoyed some parts of the book, but the number of characters and slow pacing didn’t do it justice. I found Sasha a bland character that is not exciting to follow, and some of the relationships between characters odd, which didn’t help matters. I do think the mystery surrounding Holly’s venomous actions interesting and Oktobear fest cute, so that made it worth the read.
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