Partners in Lime: 03/18/24

Partners in Lime by Bree Baker and Thérèse Plummer (Narrator) (2021) is the sixth book in the Seaside Cafe Mystery series. It involves murder at the annual summer play. Matt has a part as a long-bowman but after a celebrity surfer is found dead with one of Matt's arrows in his body, Matt is the main person of interest. Everly is convinced he's innocent and will do whatever it takes to prove his innocence, even if it means threatening her relationship with Grady.

This particular volume leans hard into the whole Swan curse thing. Everly uses the curse as her excuse for her amateur sleuthing. She's so hellbent on not having any man she might be interested in fall victim to the family curse that she will rush head first into danger.

The arrows too were a frustrating motif. There seems to be an infinite quiver of them available to whomever is first trying to frame Matt and then is later obsessed with it as a weapon. Of course the longbow ends up being used in climax to threaten Grady's life and force Everly to face her family curse head on.

The problem with the longbow being in the climax, to finally being absolutely dangerous, goes in complete opposition to earlier conversations over how difficult the weapon it is to wield. Either Matt is the murderer from the get-go and Everly is naively wrong or there's exactly one other person with the physicality and practice to use it. Does Everly take that fact into account, no, of course not.

The final book in the series is Pleading the Fish (2022).

Four stars

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