Michelle Blanchard Ardillo

With a busy week where I was spending a lot of time at my former school directing an adaptation of The Taming of the Shrew (written by my daughter, allow me a moment to brag), I had very little time to read, and when I did settle down after wrangling middle schoolers, I was out of steam.

Back to my normal routine, if you can call being retired a “normal routine,” this week I started and finished a newish murder mystery by the Canadian Ferguson brothers. I’ve had it on my TBR for over a year, where it sits on my NetGalley shelf taunting me with a Little Shop of Horrors vibe “Give Feedback.”

After my exhausting no-reading week, I needed to read something fun and light. This 324-page cozy (and spice-free) mystery fit the bill.

I enjoyed this book, once I settled into it. I’ll admit, I struggled to connect with the first 1/3 to 1/2 of the book, partly because there was no murder mystery to solve for a really long time, and partly because I really didn’t like the protagonist, Miranda Abbott (two b’s and two t’s), and she seemed every bit the washed-out, has-been of a two-bit tv actor that the Ferguson brothers created. Dead broke and anonymous to the Hollywood of today, she was still living in the dream world of her heyday, when she was a wealthy and popular tv star.

But midway through the story, a different Miranda begins to emerge. One minute she is in Podunk, USA, bemoaning the small-town people, places, and peculiarities of Happy Rock, Oregon. The next minute (alright, the next 100 pages or so) she is falling under the charm of this same small town lifestyle of Happy Rock, its people, and most importantly, its community theatre group.

It’s that part of the description of this book that made me request it on NetGalley. I was involved in a community theatre group for over five years, and while it was not the central focus of the small town I was living in at the time, it WAS the central focus of my life, something I managed to make time for as I worked full-time as a paralegal in a very busy law practice.

So, the turning point for me in making this a four-star review rather than anything lower, was the tremendous growth we see in Miranda as she comes to terms with who she really is NOW, and slowly sheds the remaining bits and pieces of who she used to be.

When looking at reviews of I Only Read Murder on Goodreads, I noticed in one review that the reader gave it the same four stars as me, but in her review she said, “3.5 rounded up because I’ve been drinking…this cozy mystery is specifically for people who miss watching 70s crime shows, Diagnosis Murder or Matlock…” While I love the humor in this Goodreads review, I must make a small correction: those two shows were not of the 70s. Full disclosure: I LOVED those shows, and I still watch reruns of them both. Even though she has the decade wrong, she is absolutely correct that this novel reads like a treatment for an episode of Murder, She Wrote (also not from the 70s). There are even several episodes where Jessica is involved in solving a murder that takes place during a community theatre production.

The last quarter of this book really took off. If the brothers Ferguson start book two of this new series with the same oomph as the last quarter of the first one, then they will have a hit on their hands. At any rate, I’ll be reading #2, Mystery in the Title, which coincidentally is published on this very day! Ahem, NetGalley and Harlequin Trade Publishing, I’d sure like a copy to read and review!