Review: The Tattered Cover by Ellery Adams

The Tattered Cover (Secret, Book, & Scone Society #8)
written by Ellery Adams
narrated by Cris Dukehart

My Rating: 4 stars

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

Blurb:
It was a dark, rainy night at Nora Pennington’s Miracle Books when a mysterious death brings the Secret, Book, and Scone Society into the Halloween season on the trail of a murderer . . .

As the residents of Miracle Springs, North Carolina, select their costumes, plan parties, and get excited for a night of tricks or treats, Nora joins in on the festivities by hosting medium memoirist Lara Luz at the bookstore. Charismatic and compelling, Lara mesmerizes the audience with her life story. Struck by a bolt of lightning as a child, she was pronounced dead only to be resurrected with the ability to connect with those on the other side.

Lara performs a reading for a select group of bookstore patrons when the encroaching storm knocks out the power. In the sudden darkness, howling cold winds intensify, and Lara clutches her heart, collapsing dead without warning. But Nora doesn’t believe she died of natural causes. Not one member of the psychic’s reading group—which includes the town’s widower pharmacist, an urgent care nurse, a mystery author, and even truculent Deputy Hollowell—were admirers of Lara.

Nora confirms this when she stumbles upon Lara’s journal in the aftermath of her death. For within its leathery bound pages are the medium and her clients’ deepest and darkest secrets, written in code. Now, Nora and the Secret, Book, and Scone Society must sift through the suspects and their motives to uncover which one of them is a killer before he or she is tempted to strike again . . .

My Review

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

I love this series and was excited for this newest release. I am now caught up with this series and eagerly anticipation each new release. It was so fun to return to Miracle Springs and spend time with Nora and her friends again. This series has a wodnerful found family theme with Nora and the other members of The Secret, Book and Scone Society. These characters have grown very close and it’s a joy to read about them and their lives.

In this book Nora gets involved in another mystery as a psychic medium dies in her bookstore after a book signing and reading. This is a bit of a locked room mystery with it being pretty clear it was someone in the small group that was part of the psychic reading who killed the medium. This was a great mystery and I enjoyed seeing it play out. There was a certain aspect to the mystery I haven’t seen often before in cozies and I thought it was well done. It was a bit of a sad one when the truth and motive come to light, it made sense, but it also made me sad that it had come to this instead.

This series really blends the cozy moments well with some more harder or realistic topics and it’s something I really enjoy. I really like reading about these characters and there are so many awesome side characters. This book deals with some big changes in Estella’s life as she’s now pregnant and there are some great scenes as her friends rally around her.

To summarize: I really enjoyed this latest release in this series. I love this series with it’s blend of cozy scenes with harder and realistic topics it addresses. I really like reading about Nora and her close group of friends, they all feel so real and I enjoy reading about them. This book has an interesting mystery with a medium who dies in Nora’s story and only a few people were part of the psychic reading and it’s one of those who killed the medium. There are side plot lines about the characters and I enjoy seeing the character lives progress throughout the series. The narrator is awesome and I really like the different voices and her narration for this series.

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

You can also read my review on Goodreads and Bookbub.