Dead Bath and Beyond

 This is the 4th book in the Victoria Square series by Lorraine Bartlett.  This series is a fun mix of crafts/antiques with mysteries mixed in.  Katie is a great character with ample ability to manage a business but still having a realistic dose of insecurity and uncertainty in her social and business life.  The series feels a bit different than many cozy mysteries as Katie doesn't have a central female BFF whom she confides and colludes with.  In this case many of the supporting and recurring characters are male although Katie does interact with Rose quite a bit at Artisan Alley, it's not a central sounding board or co-conspiring relationship.   Instead, the main characters she bounces her investigations off are male- her boyfriend and her friend, Ray Davenport, are the 2 main characters filling that role but at times her friend Seth in a central character as well.  

This book will especially be appealing to readers who like to boat as it centers around the end of the boating season on Lake Ontario. There are quite a few sailing related scenes and conversations.  As always the book is full of false suspicions and the ending is a bit surprising but does tie up all the pieces of the story that had been presented as unexplained situations.  I will admit though I did lose track of all the different characters in this book and was a bit uncertain who was the guilty party in the overall scheme of the story.  I think this may have been correlated to the fact that I listened to this on audiobook rather than read it and that caused me to lose track of the large cast of characters introduced in this story.

All in all a good book in a great series.   

Dead, Bath, and Beyond (Victoria Square, #4) by Lorraine Bartlett
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I enjoyed the audio book version of this cozy. There are some good plot angles and the development of relationships both personal and professional are well written. They are realistically up and down with struggles that feel probable. The mystery itself is well written and the story wrapped up well at the ending.

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Challenge Prompts

The Challenge Prompts I will use this for are:  

1. Library Love  #LibraryLoveChallenge  Book #106
2. Finishing the Series   #FinishingTheSeries2021 Book 4 in series 31
3. Virtual Mount TBR #VirtualMountTBR2021   Book #114
4. Back List Reader  #Backlistreader  Book #128
5. Calendar of Crime  #CalendarOfCrime2021   sept
6. Cruisin thru Cozies  Free choice #73
7. Cloak & Dagger  #CloakDaggerChal  Book #108
8. Craving for Cozies  Book #91
9. Medical Examiner Challenge 1 Toe Tags
10. Beachcomber Challenge  
• Crime Scenes 
• Row 2
• Lake or ocean

Row 5

Bathtub, shower, bathroom

• Weapons
• Row 3
• Drowning, water, ice
• Detectives- Katie/Ray
• Victims- Jake
11. Six Shooter Challenge  Target #67a  Shot #3
12. Audiobook  #2021AudiobookChallenge  Book#11