Reviewed by Annika
TITLE: Murder at Pirate’s Cove
SERIES: Secrets and Scrabble #1
AUTHOR: Josh Lanyon
NARRATOR: Matt Haynes
PUBLISHER: JustJoshin Publishing
LENGTH: 6 hours, 11 minutes
RELEASE DATE: April 19, 2020
BLURB:
First in an adorable new cozy series!
Ellery Page, aspiring screenwriter, Scrabble champion, and guy with worst luck in the world when it comes to dating, is ready to make a change. So, when he learns he’s inherited both a failing bookstore and a falling-down mansion in the quaint seaside village of Pirate’s Cove on Buck Island, Rhode Island, it’s full steam ahead!
Sure enough, the village is charming, its residents amusingly eccentric, and widowed police chief Jack Carson is decidedly yummy (though, probably, as straight as he is stern).
However, the bookstore is failing, the mansion is falling down, and there’s that little drawback of finding rival bookseller and head of the unwelcoming committee Trevor Maples dead during the annual Buccaneer Days celebration.
Still, it could be worse. And once police chief Carson learns Trevor was killed with the cutlass hanging over the door of Ellery’s bookstore, it is.
Note: This story contains no sex or violence.
REVIEW:
Get ready for a new murder mystery by Josh Lanyon. It’s got this cozy-mystery vibe to it that I loved, you know the small-town setting where everyone knows everyone and is up in everyone’s business. The gossiping old ladies, the almost mandatory bookstore owner turned amateur sleuth. This book has it all.
Ellery Page recently inherited a bookshop from his late aunt, and in need of a change I his life he moves to Pirate’s Cove located on a small island off the coast of Rhode Island. The mansion he also inherited needs a bit, or a lot, of work and his aunt seemed to be a bit of a collector – of everything. Getting both the mansion and the bookshop back in good order requires a lot of will and determination not to say countless of hours of hard work. But Ellery wants to make it work in this quaint town and refuses any offer to sell. But when said prospect buyer is found dead in his store he encounters more problems than he knows how to handle. However the police chief Jack Carson is most intriguing and Ellery can’t help but to be drawn to the man.
As stated in the blurb of the book, there is no sex near it. It’s a mystery through and through with the, very, occasional romantic interlude and only minor at that. So if you are looking for romance, declarations of love, the longing gazes and whatnot, this might not be the book for you. It might happen someway down the line, but we are not there just yet. I kind of like that. I’m a huge fan of mysteries of all kinds and don’t need an abundance of romance in my books, it does add favour to it, but this book stands great on its own without it. As for the mystery itself I do think it was a good one. I did figure it out pretty quickly but I still loved watching our main characters trying to make all the pieces fit together. And spending time in Pirate’s Cove was a lot of fun, the murders might or might not be included in that statement.
Matt Haynes was a great performer for this book. I think he captured the feel of this eccentric town obsessed with anything pirate related. I think he really captured both Ellery and Jack really well and his voices for them made it easy to keep track and follow the dialogues. Production-wise it felt like there was a harshness to the production of it. It was most noticeable in the beginning of the listen as you got used to the sound after a few minutes. It wasn’t the narration itself, because it was great and I’d love to listen to more of Hayne’s in the future and hopefully also go back to Pirate’s Cove.
RATING: 
BUY LINKS: