I received a copy from Minotaur Books through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
A year after becoming entangled in a real life murder mystery, Alice is struggling her way through parenthood with a lot of snacks and caffeine to keep her going. Thankfully, she’s not alone in this new sleepless life because she has Joe and her close friends in Penton. It’s why Alice finds herself part of a protest, getting chained to a tree, and stumbling her way into a whole new murder mystery. Now Alice and company are on the scent with Helen and the babies in tow.
I absolutely love this series. We follow Alice, a first time mom who is still new to paying attention to her eco footsteps. What I love about Alice and her friends is that they don’t always know what they’re doing. They’re fumbling around and figuring out investigating on the fly, which makes it more realistic on top of being absolutely hilarious. They touch the evidence they come across, look forward to finding out what the lead investigator has on file, and they get caught up in new gossip surrounding the people they’re investigating. This time around, we see Alice find herself getting chained to a tree only to doze her way into a new murder mystery a year after helping solve the first one.
We have our regular cast of characters from the previous book with a whole new cast of characters thrown into the mix. Alice and most of her friends find themselves getting a little involved with a local group of protesters who are in a weird phase at the moment. This local group is where most of our new characters come in, which lead to some hilarious moments, like baby Jack having a grand time at the worst of times.
One of the things I like about this book is that no one really knows what they’re doing with the investigation and as new parents. There’s a good balance between the serious tones and hilarious moments so that things aren’t bleak. We see that everyone is struggling in their own way, new parent or not, and that Alice is only going along with the investigation because it’s the first time that Poppy has perked up in a year. We also see the emotional toll of everything on Alice, especially as we get closer to the end of the book.
My only complaint is that we hardly hear about Joe’s dad and the commune. I understand that it’s a separate storyline, but ever since Joe learned who his father was, I was expecting his dad and the commune to play a bigger role in this book. I found it kind of weird that the first time it was even mentioned was around halfway through the story even though Joe was hoping to get to know his dad, and now brother, ever since he learned he was going to be a father himself. We never learned how Joe’s relationship with his dad is going, but we do learn that he’s developed a friendship of sorts with his brother even though we don’t see or hear from him until later. It just seemed kind of weird, so I’m hoping that this is covered more in the next book.
All in all, I really enjoyed this story and getting to know more of the characters. It was nice to see Hen come back around after she understandably dipped for a bit from the group in the series opener. I do think it was really weird that Joe’s dad and his commune were barely mentioned, but I was happy to see his brother again.
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