Get your copy here!

Tucked away in the rolling hills of rural western Virginia is the storybook resort of Storyton Hall, catering to book lovers who want to get away from it all. To increase her number of bookings, resort manager Jane Steward has decided to host a Murder and Mayhem week so that fans of the mystery genre can gather together for some role-playing and fantasy crime solving.

But when the winner of the scavenger hunt, Felix Hampden, is found dead in the Mystery Suite, and the valuable book he won as his prize is missing, Jane realizes one of her guests is an actual murderer. Amid a resort full of fake detectives, Jane is bound and determined to find a real-life killer. There’s no room for error as Jane tries to unlock this mystery before another vacancy opens up…

I’ve been reading a different Ellery Adams series; when the library ran out of books in that series, I decided to try this one.

This book includes all the classic cozy mystery expectations, but some things that I wasn’t expecting (I don’t read back cover copy). I love that the heroine is mother (to twins!) and that the family connection is with her aunt and uncle instead of parents/siblings (which is more traditional). What I wasn’t expecting is the secret within the mystery, which creates great tension for the rest of the series.

I loved a lot of things about this book, but for some reason I just didn’t connect with the characters as well as I did with her SBSS characters–it might be that there were a lot of characters. I was listening to the audio, so the large cast was a little harder to follow.

Overall, a fun book that prepped the way for a fun series.

Rated PG.

As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

For more Ellery Adams books, check out The Secret, Book & Scone Society.