Read and Buried by Erika Chase

Read and Buried (Ashton Corners Book Club, #2)

by Erika Chase

Hosting an award-winning novelist is quite a Christmas coup for the Ashton Corners Mystery Readers and Cheese Straw Society. But when he’s murdered in Lizzie Turner’s house, she’s got a holiday homicide on her hands …


For their very first guest author event, most of the book club members can’t wait to pull out all the stops in Southern hospitality. But for Lizzie, Derek Alton is nothing but trouble—from his massive ego to his smarmy moves. When he’s found murdered in her living room, it seems someone decided that this womanizing writer would be better off dead than read.


After suspicion falls on Lizzie’s friend, she and her fellow book club members discover that Derek wasn’t who he pretended to be. Cracking this case means going up against Lizzie’s boyfriend, police chief Mark Dreyfus, and unearthing a novel’s worth of nasty secrets. And as they get closer to uncovering Derek’s scandalous final manuscript, someone hiding in plain sight is out to write finis to Lizzie’s sleuthing for good…

Reviewed by MurderByDeath on

3 of 5 stars

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This, the second book in a new series, was not quite as strong as I'd hoped it would be. I enjoyed it, and I'll read the next one, but there were some things I took issue with in the story line, well, mainly one thing. The romantic interest to our main character, Lizzie, gets his back up over a misunderstanding at the beginning of the book and spends the first half of the book snubbing her. Then, all of the sudden, everything is totally back to normal - no explanation, no 'clearing the air' between characters - nothing. The exact same thing happens between Lizzie and the deputy investigating the crime - first half of the book, she's nasty, making sneering comments to Lizzie and acting like an ass. Suddenly, she's going jogging with Lizzie and inviting her to parties. No explanation, no air-clearing, nothing. Poor writing (or editing), imo.

In spite of that, this was a good book and I did enjoy it - the mystery was interesting enough, with lots of suspects (although I found it easy to guess who the murderer was) and the characters are likeable. Ashton Corners sounds like a great little town and I look forward to reading about more mayhem and murder taking place there - but I also look forward to more consistent story-telling.

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Reading updates

  • Started reading
  • 19 December, 2012: Finished reading
  • 19 December, 2012: Reviewed