Southern Sass and a Battered Bride by Kate Young

I hadn't read the previous books in this series and wish that I had. Young did a good job of filling in some back stories but I was really struggling with why Marygene Brown would have ever been involved with Alex Myers. 

In this book, he's marrying another woman, Lucy. And Lucy is... well, let's go with she's a jerk. And a bridezilla. When Lucy ends up dead after the wedding, Marygene becomes an obvious suspect but Alex also wildly accuses his own cousin, Betsy, who is Marygene's best friend. 

The book is a wild romp with some pretty outrageous exploits on the part of our heroine who is pulled into the mystery, not by her own curiosity, but because she seems to be part of some collateral damage.

I hope that future books don't fall into the love triangle that could result as a part of the end of this book but I think Young is sidestepping that possibility (thank goodness.) I did enjoy the fact that Marygene's ghostly mother was used lightly.

Three stars

Follows Southern Sass and a Crispy Corpse

This book comes out April 27th

ARC kindly provided by Kensington Books and NetGalley

Opinions are my own

On Borrowed Crime by Kate Young

 Lyla Moody has put together her life after some obsessive behavior (which is oft-referenced, never fully explored). Part of the joy in her life includes a book club called the Jane Does which reads mystery stories. But they recently also seem to have discussed some nearby Jane Doe cases and that becomes a major clue into what happened to one of their members. 

It is, in fact, Lyla who is one of the last people to Carol, a judge's wife before she disappears, only to have her body appear at Lyla's house in such a way that it is very apparent she couldn't have gotten herself there. Lyla works for her uncle's detective agency but she is just an admin. At least, she was before now. Now, she wants to know what happened to her friend. 

Lyla does start by being smarter than the average fictional amateur detective and giving her information to the police, even the slightly sinister Officer Taylor. He sure doesn't seem to like Lyla. But he does like her best friend which may come in to play later in the series.

I liked the idea for the series and will read the next book for sure but this book was a bit disordered and I sure hope that the publisher had a good line editor because there were a LOT of spelling errors/word choices (I didn't count it against the book.) The story was a little bit all over the place too. There was some world building but there were a lot of lines added to the story that weren't completely woven in.

Three stars

This book came out October 6th

ARC kindly provided by Crooked Lane Library and NetGalley

Opinions are my own