Review: Berried at Sea by Peg Cochran

Berried at Sea (Cranberry Cove #4)
written by Peg Cochran
narrated by Romy Nordlinger

My Rating: 3 stars

Genre: Cozy Mystery
Age Category: Adult
Type of romance: m/f

Blurb:
It’s a marriage made in murder in the new Cranberry Cove Mystery from USA Today best-selling author Peg Cochran!

The long-awaited wedding of Monica and Greg is the highlight of the harvest season in Cranberry Cove, drawing friends from far and wide to help them celebrate. Among the guests are an old college friend of Monica’s and the woman’s boisterous new husband, a man with many enemies and more than a few bitter women in his past. When he turns up dead on a boat, the victim of a fatal stabbing, Monica steps in once again to unravel the mystery.

As she dredges up clues and wades through a long list of suspects, Monica’s sleuthing becomes all the more pressing when the local police are convinced that her friend did the deed. Monica will have to clear her name fast and track down the real culprit as the killer threatens to bring her sweet wedded bliss to a bitter end.

My Review

I received a free copy from Tantor Audio and voluntarily reviewed it.

I was in the mood for a familiar and comforting read so I picked up the next Cranberry Cove Mystery book. Sadly I did not enjoy this one as the previous books, but mostly still had a good time listening to this book. It’s fun to be back in this town again and reading about the familiar characters.

Monica and Greg are getting married at the start of this book, the start felt a bit rushed and the marriage mostly seemed to function as a place to introduce the victim who Monica and Greg find the next morning on their walk. I liked seeing Monica and Greg’s lives change and seeing them live together now, but I did not like how they interacted when it came to the mystery. Greg suddenly seems way more insistent that Monica leave it the police and I don’t remember that from the past few books. Monica on the other hand starts lying to Greg about the sleuthing, which I didn’t like. I liked seeing them figure things out now that they’re living together and how that all works and I hope they sort things out when it comes to the mysteries in the next book.

The mystery has the husband of one of Monica’s friends from college getting murdered. Monica recently reconnected with this friend (this happened before the start of the book) and her friend asks her for help solving the mystery. To be honest I didn’t really feel Monica’s friendship with Andrea, it just felt like a convenient reason for Monica to get involved in the mystery, but there were no conversations at all that gave me the feeling they used to be friends.

The mystery was a decent one. I did figure out who the killer was relatively early, but wasn’t fully sure as there was some info missing. I liked seeing Monica actually rule out a bunch of suspects before figuring out who the murderer was. I just wasn’t as invested in the mystery as I would’ve liked.

This book felt pretty focussed on the mystery. I liked the daily life parts seeing Greg and Monica now as a married couple. I did feel there was a bit less about the other side characters and I would’ve liked a bit more of that. Gina did make a couple of appearances as well as Monica’s half brother Jeff who is planning his wedding with his fiancé. There’s also a plot line surrounding some things going wrong in the farm kitchen and I felt this plot line didn’t really add much and wasn’t really sure what the point was and it didn’t get fully resolved. I also wish Monica spent some more time baking as she always seems to run off to go sleuthing instead and I would like some more baking scenes and not her just leaving most of the work to her employee.

To summarize: I was fun to return to Cranberry Cove for another book, but I didn’t enjoy this one as much as the previous books. I liked seeing Monica and Greg get married, although the wedding scene felt a bit rushed. The mystery was a decent one, but I wasn’t as invested in it. I managed to guess the murderer relatively early on, but wasn’t quite sure about some things and those details came to light later on. I liked seeing Monica rule out some suspects before finding the killer. I didn’t like how Monica hid her sleuthing from Greg and how Greg was constantly telling her to leave it to the police, I don’t think they had that dynamic in previous books and I hope they get back to how things used to be. All in all not the best book in the series for me, but I hope the next book is better again.

Links:
– Goodreads
– Bookbub
– Amazon
– B&N
– Kobo

You can also read my review on Goodreads and Bookbub.