WAVE GOOD-BYE by Lila Dare

  

Publisher:    Berkley

Published:   March 5, 2013

ISBN:     978-0425257814

Genre:    Cozy Mystery

Format:  Paperback

Obtained via:  Publisher  

Reviewed by name and email address:  Gina Gina@loveromancesandmorereviews.com

THREE-1/2 HEARTS

Life for Grace Terhune has pretty much settled down. She and her beau, Marty have come to something of an understanding even though she’s in St. Elizabeth and he’s in Washington, D.C.  And things at Violetta’s, her mom’s beauty shop are going along okay.  Things look pretty stable. 

Well sort of.  Marty hasn’t been exactly Mr. Devoted.  And lately Violetta’s clients haven’t been showing up.  More like they’ve been calling to cancel because big franchise, Snippets, has been taking all their customers.  As it turns out a former marketing guru took on Violetta’s as a client only so she could steal their client list. When that woman, who is also an old high school classmate of Grace’s turns up dead, all the clues point to Grace as the killer.  After all, she had means and the motive and no real alibi to get herself off the hook.  It’s time for Grace to go into sleuthing mode and quickly before she ends up in the gray bar inn.

Lila Dare’s Southern Beauty Shop Mysteries have been a fun series for me.  I totally enjoyed the first three books and was very much looking forward to book 4, WAVE GOOD-BYE.  WAVE GOOD-BYE wasn’t a bad read.  It was actually pretty good—it was just different from the first three.  The title pretty much sums up the ending of the series.  Word is that the original author had to stop writing for personal reasons and another author stepped in and wrote WAVE GOOD-BYE.  Since another book hasn’t come out in the series in two years it would seem that the title reflects not only what happens to the characters in the story, but a chance for them to “wave good-bye” to their readers.

Grace has always been a wonderfully spunky character and along with the other women who work at Violetta’s provide some good chuckles with their special brand of southern humor.  There wasn’t really a lot of focus on Grace solving the mystery in this one but it was still an interesting read.  Personally I’m hoping that the new author will take up the series for more than what seems to be this final book.  After all, with the changes the characters made she definitely set the stage for to take the series in a really fun direction.

This is an objective review and an endorsement of this book.