The Inheritance Killer

If “Practical Magic“ was a mystery, it would be this book!
PLOT: Lily Blackwood runs a cursed bookshop in the Pacific Northwest. She is a witch and her employees are ghosts. Then two things happen all at once: a cursed book arrives (part grimoire & part cookbook with violent intentions), and a new age shopkeeper is murdered. Lily believes the murder may have something to do with the book and/or possibly an ancestor who died tragically in 1863. To research the book and the death of her ancestor, she needs to ask for help from Dr. Merry Chan, the director of the public library. Unfortunately, Merry is a former lover she has been avoiding for years.
POSITIVE: I LOVE this book. It is going on my keeper shelf! It has everything I love in show more a book: mystery, books, ghosts, genealogy, and historical research. Add a cat and it would have been perfect.
The book is a cozy, so most of the violence is off-screen. There is plenty of romantic tension, but no graphic sex. “G” rated and grandma approved.
The characters are well written. I especially love Cordelia, the 1950s ghostly bookshop assistant. Her focus on order and organization was wonderful. As a former librarian, I get it, Cordelia, those things ARE important. If organizing and re-organizing the same books ever gets boring, come to my house and I have bookshelves galore for you to organize!
My one caveat is don’t start reading this book late at night. Not because it is scary, but because it is SO enjoyable you will not want to put it down. Each chapter seems to be “a day in the life of” which gives the book natural stopping points, but you won’t want to. It is so enjoyable that you will want to read the next chapter and the next and the next...
NEGATIVE: As a retired librarian and former archivist, there are a few cringe worthy moments. Food and drink in Special Collections or around antique books & documents is a big no-no. There is no safe distance for historical documents. I destroyed a keyboard that was over 28 inches away from a cup of coffee. One oops and bye-bye document. An archivist, librarian, and historical researcher like Dr. Chan would know this.
CONCLUSION: I am looking forward to book two in this series of which the reader gets a peak at the end of this book. As I wrote above, I LOVED this book. I highly recommend this book. show less

2.25 stars.

I went into this book thinking it'd be a mystery book, and it started off well with a murder, but there wasn't a lot of mystery about it. Then it escalated in every chapter with more things happening, but not any mystery. I almost thought the book would be over by chapter 6, but it course something went wrong and their ritual didn't work. I just felt this was a bit too early for a trying to catch the bad guy in a mystery book. It also felt a bit rushed. I think they should've built things up slower with the escalation, and focused on the characters and what they were thinking.

I also would've liked better world building. How does the witch council work? Is magic well known or not? How does magic work ? How strong is show more Prudence?These things were never clearly explained, and would've added a lot of needed depth to the story.

There was also. So. Much. I started going insane even before I was halfway through. Them mentioning things we just talked about on the page before. Also just repeating things from earlier in the book. "She's escalating", "she was alone but I have all these people *lists all her friends*". It almost feels like it's made for second screening because they tell you the plot points over and over again. It feels like you could remove half the book and you wouldn't miss anything.

There were also some things that didn't feel like they added up and should be looked over by an editor. Just small continuity errors that really brought you out of the book. Since this is an arc copy I hope they will read it through again and fix the errors and maybe even remove some of the repetitions.

Example: in chapter eight they call Detective Greene to set up a meeting with Felix Thorne and specifically having the detective there as a witness. In chapter nine they had the meeting and the detective was nowhere in sight, he even made a call from another spot.

Sure, it's not a huge error, but it wasn't the only one and it really took you out of the story and confused you.

Not a super fan of "second chance" romance, it's just a bit boring to me. It was an okay read, but they could've been dating from the start with no real difference to the story or how the romance evolved.

I liked chapter 15 and forward better, the plot actually moved forward, even though there still was some unnecessary repetition. The last chapter and epilogue could've been cut down a lot. They tried to tease the next book in the epilogue but I think they could've skipped it. show less