Reading Up a Storm: 06/06/16

Reading Up a Storm by Eva Gates is the third of Lighthouse Library mystery series. In my review of Booked for Trouble, I expressed concerns about the believability of the set up for the series (a fictional re-imagining of an actual light house in North Carolina). Now I'm deciding the series is just fun to read and not to be taken too seriously.

Lucy Richardson, the onsite librarian, sees a ship in distress during a particularly bad thunder storm. She calls the coast guard, reports it, and figures that's it. Of course, this being a mystery series, that's not the end of it.

A man ends up dead at the rescue site, though not on the same day. A friend is accused. And Lucy is once again up to her armpits in suspects.

What made this volume especially fun was the way it poked good natured fun at some of my other favorite series. The lighthouse being a historical place has a reputation for being haunted, or near a haunted location. Bodie's proximity to Duck gives another opportunity.

Let me explain...

In Reading Up a Storm there's a character who is a self described spiritualist and ghost hunter, Louise-Jane. That's one letter off from another Southern born ghost hunter, namely Mary Jane Holliday (M.J.) from the Ghost Hunter mystery series. Later in the book, Lucy's investigation leads her up to Duck, the home of the Missing Pieces series by Joyce and Jim Lavene.

Those little nods to other series I've been following made this book more fun.

Five stars

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