Vinyl Resting Place by Olivia Blacke ~ a Review

by Donna Huber

Tansy, Maggie, and Juni have reopened their family's record shop, but when a dead body is found at the end of their grand opening party they might just lose everything this time.

Amazon affiliate links are used on this site. A free book was provided for an honest review.

December 2022; St. Martin's; 978-1250860088
audio, ebook, print (304 pages); cozy mystery 

I read a lot of cozy mysteries but I think this is the only one that features three sisters and a record store. While the youngest sister Juni is the main sleuth, the other two sisters helped with the investigation. It would be cool if each sister kind of took the lead in future books, but I'm not sure if that is how it will be set up. Vinyl Resting Place is book 1 in the Record Shop Mystery series.

I liked the mystery. There are clues throughout as to who the killer is but the motive is not clear until the end which makes it difficult to put the clues together. 

The jury is kind of out on whether I liked the characters. We get to know Juni pretty well, but Maggie and Tansy are pretty flat and could really use some fleshing out (which would be easy to do in future books if each took the lead on the mystery). But the sisters kind of grew on me and I think in another book or two I could really like them. 

The male characters on the other hand - all of them rubbed me the wrong way. Also, I'm not a fan of the love triangle trope in cozy mysteries. I'm about fed up with it in the Joanne Fluke series and I'm not looking forward to another character that can't make up her mind about which guy she likes and/or leading them on because she likes the attention. 

Overall, the writing is good. There was some repetition that became tiresome. And some of it didn't make sense. Like how everyone knows everyone's business yet no one knew about Calvin's bowling habit. Some of the info was waved away with "we didn't realize you didn't know, Juni". 

 

I'm not a big music fan but I did like the music references and if you are a music fan you will probably enjoy the nods to bands new and old even more.

I liked the book enough to be looking forward to the next book in the series. 

Buy Vinyl Resting Place at Amazon

Donna Huber is an avid reader and natural encourager. She is the founder of Girl Who Reads and the author of how-to marketing book Secrets to a Successful Blog Tour.

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