Shattered at Sea (A Webb’s Glass Shop Mystery #5)
by Cheryl Hollon
Rating: 3 stars
Genre: Cozy Mystery
Blurb:
When Savannah signs on to perform glass blowing on a ship that departs from the UK, part of the appeal is that she’ll get a chance to meet her boyfriend Edward’s family. An added bonus is that Edward’s cousin, Ian, will be joining them on board. But when Ian disappears at the beginning of the cruise, the ship’s authorities initially consider it suicide.Savannah tries to balance her growing suspicions with work on her shows, but her relationship with the other glass artists begins to crack. And she can’t let love color her judgment when Edward suddenly jumps to the top of the suspect list. His fate is in Savannah’s hands, and she’ll do everything she can–on land and sea–to clear his name . . .
My Review
I received a free copy of this book through Netgalley and voluntarily reviewed it.
This is one of my favorite cozy mystery series and it’s always fun to start the new book in this series. I was excited to see what adventures Savannah and her posse would get up to in this one. There is again the focus on glass, this time in the form of glassblowing aboard a cruise ship. The cruise ship was a nice change of scenery, although I did miss some of the more familiar aspects from the previous books. I liked how the author managed to bring most of the familiar characters into this mystery even with the different setting.
One thing that didn’t quite work for me in this one was the mystery. Instead of a standard murder mystery, this was a bit of a missing persons case, but not quite. For a long time it is unclear whether Ian is still alive, but hiding or dead. So there wasn’t as much investigating at first, just trying to get security involved and looking for Ian, which wasn’t that interesting. There was no who has done it tension as there wasn’t even a clear murder yet. The whole pace and progression of the mystery just felt off. And then at the end the bad guy was pretty obvious. It was just weird and sadly didn’t quite work for me. I was way more invested in the other elements than the mystery.
My favorite part of this book was seeing the familiar characters again. Savannah gets to visit Edwards home town and parents, which was fun to see. I liked seeing how Savannah and Edward’s relationship was doing and how they are doing after what the overcame in the previous book. They have some rough patches, but I liked how they kept communicating clearly and supporting each other. It was fun how the author worked the twins, Jacob and Amanda into this story as well. And the glassblowing scenes aboard the ship were fun to read.
The cruise ship made for an interesting change of scenery and I liked how we got a bit of a feel for the ship. I just had expected the mystery to make use of the whole cruise ship thing, with how the killer had to be onboard, but that element didn’t really get utilized as much. The whole glassblowing aboard a cruise ship was really interesting and I liked how we got to see Savannah make some glass pieces in this book, as she usually is more busy with running the shop.
To summarize: All in all this was a fun read, but not my favorite in the series so far. I liked the change of scenery the cruise ship brought. But I am sad the mystery didn’t have had the tension I had hoped and didn’t grab me as much. The mystery was very slow to get started and didn’t feel as clear as there wasn’t a body and it wans’t clear if there was a murder or not. and I normally like missing person cases, but this one just didn’t work for me. The culprit was pretty obvious and I didn’t really care for the reveals about Edward and Ian’s past. I did like seeing the familiar characters again and the glassblowing scenes were a lot of fun to read. The ending was sweet and I am looking forward to the next book in this series.
Links:
– Goodreads
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You can also read my review on Goodreads and Amazon.
It’s been a long time since I read a story set on a cruise ship. Too bad the mystery was a confusing one with the missing person/slow investigation start, but glad the ongoing characters and relationships were a hit.
I liked the cruise ship setting, but was a bit sad the mystery was confusing and slow to start. I really like the characters and relationship progress that happened in this book :). I hope the mystery is better again in the next book.
Love the premise of this story. This sounds like a book that I might enjoy.
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I really enjoy this series so far š