Book 106, 2022

[chez_jae]

Christmas, a Cat and Cardiac Arrest by N.L. Cameron

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



My work place was closed today, due to Winter Storm Elliott. It enabled me to finish reading Christmas, a Cat, & Cardiac Arrest by NL Cameron. This is the first book in the author's "Heather's Forge" mystery series. The story is in first-person pov of the main character, Allie Garrett.

After walking in on her fiance and her BFF, Allie flees the city for the small town of Heather's Forge. Her great-aunt Beatrice has passed away unexpectedly, leaving her business, the Barrell Inn, to Allie. Instead of a refreshing new lease on life, Allie's arrival is met with suspicion and hostility from the locals. Her employees at the inn are the most hostile, making Allie's transition far more difficult than she anticipated. In the meantime, she discovers Beatrice's journals and learns that her aunt was growing increasingly paranoid in the last weeks of her life. It leads Allie to suspect her aunt was murdered. The incompetent sheriff and his bumbling deputy dismiss her concerns, leaving Allie no choice but to do some investigating of her own. Getting closer to the answers, however, also brings Allie closer to a killer.

I'll say it again, I'm getting tired of the "main character inherits a bookstore/antique shop/inn from an unknown-or-barely-known relative" trope. Have your mc sink his/her life savings into buying such a business, if you want to move him/her out of a rut and into a fresh start. Blah. I was taken aback by how utterly rude people were to Allie, especially her employees. My lord, if I walked into my new business and was met with that level of disrespect, the next words out of my mouth would be, "Get your shit and get out." Allie just meekly tolerated it. On top of that, the decisions she made in regards to her "sleuthing" were abysmally stupid. Frankly, she deserved to die at the end, as she was truly too dumb to live.

Favorite line: "I need your head in this game, not fantasizing about his rear end."

Reading this irked me, to be honest. I prefer my main characters to have more backbone and common sense. Two stars, and one is for the cat, Pixie, who had far more moxie and sense than Allie did.