ARC Review: Killer in the Carriage House

I received an ARC of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This did not affect my opinion of the book or my review itself.

Title: Killer in the Carriage House
Author: Sheila Connolly
Genre: Cozy Mystery
Publication Date: July 9, 2019
Recommended If You Like: history, research, small town setting

The Book:

Kate Hamilton has returned to the small town she grew up in an attempt to save it from complete bankruptcy and thus essential extinction. She comes up with a plan to take the town back in time and turn it into a Victorian village for tourists to visit. But on top of all the usual hurdles, Kate also must deal with a dead body, boxes of documents, and the possibility of romance.

What I Liked:

Small town settings typically work really well for cozy mysteries, and the town of Asheboro is a good fit for the story being told. Having a small town for a setting also keeps the action in one place, meaning all kinds of people must interact and the suspect list is centralized.

Connolly has a really nice writing style for this genre. It's light enough for a cozy, but able to handle the darkness of a murder mystery.

Anything I Didn't Like?

Unfortunately, there was a lot I didn't like about this book.

The main problem for me is it's a mystery where the actual mystery doesn't start until over a quarter of the way into the book. And even when the mystery does start, it feels like it's essentially a last-minute addition to the book. The story is far more centered around historical research than the murder, and the solution to the murder feels like a throwaway afterthought.

While I know this is an ARC, and thus not a finished work, there were a ton of really glaring typos, including a whole chapter repeated (the beginning of the chapter was changed to present a different scenario, but then the rest of the chapter was completely duplicated as a new chapter). This was really distracting and took me out of the story.

So...?

I've enjoyed other of Connolly's cozy mysteries, so I'm not sure what happened with this one, but I definitely wouldn't recommend it.