72) Paint the Town Dead by Nancy Haddock

The Blurb :

Leslee Stanton Nix—aka “Nixy”—thought moving to small-town Lilyvale, Arkansas, would be about as thrilling as watching paint dry. But keeping up with her retired Aunt Sherry and her troublemaking housemates—collectively known as the Silver Six—has proven to be as exciting as it is exasperating.

To kick off the grand opening of their craft shop, the Handcraft Emporium, Nixy and the Silver Six invite Doralee Gordon to teach a gourd painting class. Doralee’s spirit gets squashed when her ex-husband crashes the class with his new fiancée, but things really get messy when the bride-to-be later turns up dead. Now it’s up to Nixy and the Silver Six to use their melons to find the killer—before someone else gets painted out of the picture...

My Thoughts :

It hasn't been a very productive couple of weeks in regards to my reading.  I have been in a bit of a slump and hopefully this wonderful book has pulled me out of it!  Because this is the first book I have managed to read in the last two weeks.  Nothing else has interested me, nothing else could grab me and I certainly couldn't be bothered to pick up anything else to read.  However when I realised that this second book in the new cozy mystery series by Nancy Haddock was out I suddenly felt like reading again.  Once again this author has brightened my day!

Now I know Nancy from way back when!  She wrote an amazing vampire series that I miss terribly!  So when her new cozy mystery series came out last year I was eager to start it and I remember enjoying it so much that I wanted to get a sequel a lot faster than the author can write!  Now that sequel is here and I nearly missed it.  I feel ashamed to say that even though I had it on pre-order it managed to get past me and lay in wait for a couple of weeks.  It was however worth the wait and I spent a nice few hours in bed curled up with it.

I needed a few chapters to get my head around all the characters.  After a year it is normal to have forgotten who is who.  Especially if you read a lot of books.  Once things were back into place I could start enjoying this wonderful sequel in a very unique and well thought out series.  It took a few chapters to get to the murder mystery but I have to admit that I was actually more interested in Nixy and everyone else anyway and enjoyed the chance to hang out before the sleuthing started.

What else can I say without giving the whole plot away?  I can only recommend you try this series out!  It's a great cozy mystery and has so many cute and interesting things going on.  This book even saw the arrival of some fascinating pets (even though as an Amber and as a cat person....well it was weird being the dog!) and of course the whole craft shop angle is not only fun but inspiring. I can't wait for more and look forward to visiting this lovely town again and finding out more about the secrets it holds and the people within it!