Sunday, January 3, 2021

STATUE OF LIMITATIONS by Kate Collins

Publisher:  Kensington

Date Published:  January 28, 2020

ISBN#   978-1496724335
Cozy Mystery

Reviewed by Gina (myreviewbooks@aol.com

Obtained via Library



Athena Spencer, along with her young son, has returned to her family and home town, leaving behind her ex-husband and career as a journalist.  Her very traditional Greek family is there for her and she enjoys her job working in the family Garden Center.  She’s dating her old boyfriend, mainly to keep her mother from continuing to introduce her to new Greek men to marry.  While Kevin drives her nuts with his massive ego and “all about me” way of life, he does keep her mother at bay and provide fodder for her blog.  Not that her family or Kevin know it’s HER blog they find so entertaining. But things are not all that peaceful in town.  The local “rich” family, the Talbots, are determined to shut down all the Greek based businesses in town and put up some exclusive and very expensive condominiums.  Athena quickly finds herself front and center to prevent the condos.  But she suddenly has more on her plate when late one night, while working on her blog she discovers someone breaking into the Garden Center.  When she confronts the seeming burglar, Case, it seems he may have a legitimate purpose for showing up in town just then.  But then there are not one but two murders at the Talbot house and Case is caught on camera near the scene of one of the crimes.  Athena suddenly has more on her plate and soon needs to draw on her journalistic skills to solve a crime and stop the condos.

 My book club selected Kate Collins’ Statue of Limitations for our December 2020 read and we all enjoyed it.  Athena is a marvelous character – intelligent, compassionate, creative and talented.  Her family is a hoot, especially how we get to know them through Athena’s secret blog.  Case is the kind of guy I’d like to have in my life—loyal to his family, intelligent, protective of Athena without being domineering and very handsome.  He’s quite the charmer.

Collins gives her readers several suspects to choose from as they try to find the killer along with Athena.  There’s a couple of sad cases and some utterly slimy ones like her boyfriend, Kevin. 

I appreciated how Collins didn’t take a lot of artistic license with legal procedure and was very matter of fact about many of those issues.  The growing romance between Athena and Case, if there is going to be one, was nicely done—they don’t go from A-Z in one fell swoop and both of them were cognizant of Kevin’s place in her life. 

In our book club discussion we talked about how much we all enjoyed the Greek aspects of the story – the history of the Goddesses the sisters are named for, the food--this is one book I would have loved the recipes for some of the dishes, and through the characters, teaching readers a smidgeon of the language.  We all agreed we were looking forward to book 2.

 

This is an objective review and not an endorsement of this book.

 

                                                                           

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