Synopsis:
Retired, divorced, and newly-moved to a small village, Charlotte thinks her crime-solving days are over. She gets involved in as many activities as possible (including becoming mayor of the village) in the hope of keeping her mind from stagnating, and she enjoys frequent visits from Sam, her neighbor's friendly husky.
Then life becomes a little more complicated. Brenda, a famous former actress, moves to the village. Susan, one of the village's more annoying residents, is missing and may have been murdered. And several people, including Charlotte, believe they may have had valuables stolen from them.
Review:
I bought this back when I was looking for non-skeevy f/f books. The description sounded promising, more focused on the mystery than on the main character jumping into bed with another woman. Now that I've finished it, I can say that the f/f aspects are pretty light. I think Charlotte has sex maybe once, but you can't even call it a sex scene, because it's completely skipped over.
When I first started reading this, I thought I was going to really like it. Charlotte was relatively new to the village, so I looked forward to seeing her inadvertently (or on purpose) stir up some trouble just by not knowing where all the eggshells were located. She was divorced and retired and, although she didn't really miss either her job or her husband, she worried that dementia might set in if she didn't fill her days with activities to keep her mind sharp. One of those activities was sailing. Another one of those activities was occasionally taking care of Sam, her neighbor's husky, because Susan, Sam's temporary caretaker, could barely be bothered to do anything for him. The sailing scenes were okay, but I loved the scenes with Charlotte and Sam. He was a sweetie.
Unfortunately, there were a lot of things about this novella that didn't work for me, annoyed me, or confused me.
