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jenn

Murder by Death

I read cozy and historical mysteries, a bit of Paranormal/UF, and to mix it up, I read science and gardening books on occasion.

The Conspiring Woman (Arcane Society #4)

The Conspiring Woman - Kate Parker

The first three books of this series were published by Berkeley and, I'm guessing, the contract was not renewed for the fourth (this book) and the author went the self-publishing route.  This made me nervous because my experience with self published books has not been overall positive.  But I wanted to see what happened between Georgia and the Duke of Blackford.

 

The good news is that this was a really professionally edited text with obvious care taken with proofreading.  The story was tight and ran smoothly.  The bad news is that the plotting itself was weak; not only was the killer obvious but Georgia never had a clue and nobody in their right mind could have missed at least considering the character as a suspect, something the Georgia failed to do and then acted poleaxed when someone suggested it.  I was left going "oh come ON!".  

 

But the author does wrap up all the character side-stories, I got to find out what happened between Blackford and Georgia and the overall series arc with the evil nemesis (meh) was all tied up with a bow.  It was a nice read and I'm thankful the author took the chance to self publish and give her readers a happy ending.