E.C. Sheedy

A quick read as it's difficult to stop reading once you open the front cover and read the newspaper article, "Does the Hotel Philip Have a 'Room of Doom'?" My first discovery of a novel by E.C. Sheedy and I wouldn't hesitate to read another title by this author. The novel brought to mind the novels by Mary Stewart that I read so many years ago in high school. [Mary Stewart, a British novelist (1916-2014) credited with development of the romantic mystery genre.] Romance and suspense fill the show more pages and absorb the reader's attention. The author cites influences of sunshine and rain. Whether you have a few hours on a sunny afternoon or a rainy afternoon, this mystery exceeded expectations! show less

Really 3.5 stars not 4, but I liked it enough to risk the average bumping up.

I just finished this one. I'd put it in the "highly consummable category--ideal for when you've only got a couple of brain cells left to rub together after a hard week.

Emily Weland is a bookshop owner with some ambiguous inheritance that gives her a little cottage, supports her bookstore and gives her half ownership in the bakery next door--enough so that she evidently doesn't concern herself with money with all of show more the folks she has coming in to run her store while she takes time off willy nilly. She's 28 and paralyzed when it comes to dealings with the opposite sex and with most of life in general. I get the impression that she lives vicariously through the books she reads and the plays she writes. And she seems content enough with the arrangement.

Enter hot California man. Let's let him enter again because I want to watch that. I find it a little odd that he has more character development than Emily, but hey, it's a lovely sight, so I'm not complaining. He's wildly successful, driven and we understand hard parts about his childhood that made him that way. Emily, by contrast, has this mysterious problem with men in her past until the we find out when she tells California man about feeling rejected based on phsycial/sexual issues by her one and only early boyfriend years and years ago. And now, California man and Emily have an instant sizzling attraction--so she decides to use him to get some sexual experience and confidence. He's amenable (are you surprised? he's fascinated with her grey eyes). They do the deed, evidently many times but we don't get to hear much about it. And they fall in love. Over a period of 2-3 weeks. Of which California man travels for at least 1. Yeah, I'm not buying it either.

It felt like the author had a few other ideas that either weren't developed or were mercilessly (and wrongly) edited out of the final version. We almost find out why California man goes from thinking this is a fling, meaninful but a fling nonetheless, and we don't ever see what makes him decide to go all the emotional way. I think if we had, and some more character development for Emily, this could have been a much better story.

That said, I don't have that awful "damn, that's 4 hours of my life I can't get back" feeling. I doubt I'll track down the other books in the series though. show less

After a murder, friends going missing, and a killer on the loose, who can you trust? The characters were beautifully described and developed by Ms. Sheedy, which kept the reader guessing until the exciting climax.

I may have overrated this, but I found this such a sweet story about a shy bookstore owner and a sports magazine owner meeting on a holiday island. Lovely slow build up of attraction.