Bea Reviews Fatality by Firelight by Lynn Cahoon, with A Giveaway!

Series: Cat Latimer Mystery #2
Publisher: Kensington
Source: the publisher in exchange for an honest review
Release Date: February 28th, 2017
Buying Links: Amazon* | Book Depository* | iTunes* | Kobo | Barnes & Noble
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Blurb from goodreads:

Cat Latimer’s Colorado bed-and-breakfast plays host to writers from all over. But murder is distinctly unwelcome . . .

To kick off a winter writing retreat, Cat and her handyman boyfriend, Seth, escort the aspiring authors to a nearby ski resort, hoping some fresh cold air will wake up their creative muses. But instead of hitting the slopes, they hit the bar—and before long, a tipsy romance novelist named Christina is keeping herself warm with a local ski bum who might have neglected to tell her about his upcoming wedding.

Next thing Cat knows, her uncle, the town sheriff, informs her that the young man’s been found dead in a hot tub—and Christina shows up crying and covered in blood. Now, between a murder mystery, the theft of a rare Hemingway edition, and the arrival of a black-clad stranger in snowy Aspen Hills, Cat’s afraid everything’s going downhill .

My Thoughts:

The Cat Latimer series has an interesting premise, with a B&B owner who offers monthly retreats for writers. And since this is a cozy mystery series, those retreats also include a death. Then there's an overarching mystery that runs through the series. Add in some romance and you've got a packed story.

It's the second month of Cat's new retreat service and she's both excited and nervous. She's more introverted than you'd expect from someone in the hospitality business but fortunately she has her friend Shauna to help out. Shauna's also the cook, and yum, I wish she cooked for me.

This retreat has a young romance writer with bad judgment in men and before long she's embroiled in the murder of a local man. AS if that weren't enough, she has a stalker back home that she's also dealing with. Add in complications with the local college and a possible Mob hit man in town and Cat is busy keeping her guests safe while fulfilling her duties as hostess and trying to figure out her relationship with handyman and boyfriend Seth.

Cahoon writes a twisty mystery full of details and interesting people. I accurately guessed at parts of the mysteries while I was wrong about others. There was one aspect that that seemed very obvious to me but it took the characters a lot longer to figure it even with clues taring them in the face. The self-contained mystery and the larger series-wide mystery intersected in this story and I'm curious to see where Cahoon goes with it.

I do have concerns about the sustainability of the series. This story was set a month after the first book so it's only the second retreat and both had had murders. Obviously if this keeps happening, the B&B will lose business. Then there's the pacing; if each book is only a month after the previous one, the series will quickly fall behind the real world timeline which will make writing the stories more challenging, and of course, having a murder occur every month, with every retreat, will seriously strain credulity. It was good to see that Cat was worried about some of these same things so maybe Cahoon is already working on solutions.

"Fatality by Firelight" gave us a story with a small town setting, rich characters, intriguing mysteries, and enjoyable insight into being a writer. I was caught up in Cat and Shauna's lives and left wanting to know more about Cat's own personal mystery. "Fatality by Firelight" was a fun weekend read.


My review of book one, A Story to Kill

About Lynn Cahoon ~ 

Lynn Cahoon is the author of the NYT and USA Today best-selling Tourist Trap cozy mystery series. Guidebook to Murder, book 1 of the series won the Reader’s Crown for Mystery Fiction in 2015. She’s also pens the recently released, Cat Latimer series. A STORY TO KILL, book 1, came out in mass market paperback September 2016.She lives in a small town like the ones she loves to write about with her husband and two fur babies. Sign up for her newsletter at www.lynncahoon.com

Find Lynn Online:

Goodreads –http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5857424.Lynn_Cahoon
Twitter – https://twitter.com/LynnCahoon
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/LynnCahoonAuthor
Amazon author page – http://www.amazon.com/Lynn-Cahoon/e/B0082PWOAO/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_pop_1
Website – http://lynncahoon.com/

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