Murder at the Village Fete: Catherine Coles

 I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

This is definitely an easy, cozy read. It's a fun little "whodunit" with a lovely husband and wife duo.

Most of what I struggled with in this book was the uncertainty of what I was missing from the first book of this series. I haven't read the first, jumping instead right into the second book. I missed learning more about Tommy and Evelyn which I think would have helped me enjoy them more as characters. I do not think this serves well as a stand-alone book, but that's my fault. 

It was hard for me to grasp the character of Evelyn. I definitely felt as though she was more prevalent than Tommy, but even then, I didn't get enough of her to feel connect or understand her. I think Coles could have explored Evelyn more, especially when bringing up the issue of whether or not to have children. That was dropped as a side note a few times, and there was never a conversation about it, we never hear her struggle or her discussing her fears, so it's impossible to understand how she grows out of that struggle. 

I would have also loved to see more between Evelyn and Tommy. They are written to be a loving, cute, and fun couple, but we aren't given much interaction between the two. That would have helped me believe in their happy marriage a bit more (not that I doubted their happy marriage, but something was missing there). 

There were a few areas in the story that felt very forced. The main one I can point out is the relationship between the investigator, the investigation, and the Christies. I didn't understand why Evelyn and Tommy needed to solve the case (aside from them being the main characters, but I need more of a reason than that). The inspector was written as a very knowledgeable guy and clearly had it all together, so why were Evelyn and Tommy in conflict with him, "fighting" over the investigation? Why did they need to do work behind his back? Their involvement in solving the crime seemed to only exist because of the need to write the book. I think more could have been done to convince us that the Christies needed to solve the mystery themselves. 

Overall, this was a fun and easy read, definitely a cozy-mystery. More could be gained by reading the first book, as I should have done before embarking on the sequel.