Booked on Murder: 03/06/24

Booked on Murder by Allison Brook and Mia Gaskin (Narrator) (2024) is the eighth book in the Haunted Library mystery series. Carrie Singleton and Dylan Avery are checking out the venue for their wedding one last time when they find a body on the grounds. Now Carrie's in the middle of another mystery in the final run up to her wedding.

The victim is Billy Carpenter, recently released from prison for a bank robbery. Now it seems that everyone is out to find the missing loot and there are more bodies. To further complicate things, a recently found diary of a woman burned at the stake for witchcraft has the library in hot water.

Long buried treasure is so cliche. That was a staple of mysteries from thirty or forty years ago. Basing a murder around it and then to have Carrie essentially bullied into solving it by people associated with the heist seemed both hackneyed and forced.

The most interesting piece of this novel was the diary and the various parties involved. Some want to exonerate the woman and other women killed for witchcraft. Others want to prove her guilt against modern laws. Plus there is the matter of ownership and provenance.

Finally there's the secret society that Carrie's invited to join. We're on the eighth book and suddenly there's a secret society? Give me a break. I'm not against societies, secret or otherwise, but they need to be a large part of the fictional world, like the coven in Lynn Cahoon's Kitchen Witch mystery series.

But the final straw that made me end the audiobook early was the extended wedding scene after the mystery is solved. If you want me to stick around for the wedding, have it happen BEFORE the mystery is solved.

Three stars

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