A review by natcat
A Death in Door County by Annelise Ryan

lighthearted mysterious medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.75

A fun read, but I liked the concept more than the execution. I loved the lake monster and the treasure hunting elements, and I really enjoyed the
Spoilerultimately Scooby-Doo resolution of the villains faking a lake monster, but the villain just... monologuing his plan wasn't great
. It also wasn't honestly much of a mystery -
Spoilerit was apparent from pretty early on that it wasn't going to be an actual lake monster, and after that there was some wandering around trying to work out what people were doing, and a lot of info-dumping about geography and history, but it wasn't particularly compelling
. Disclaimer: I been reading Agatha Christie lately, and she is very good at putting together a mystery, so judging this book by that standards is probably a little unfair! 

The characters were fine (my favourite by far was Marty the oceanographer), the dog was cute, but I'm not particularly invested in the incipient romance, or indeed the two main characters at all, and I honestly wasn't particularly sure why the cop got the main character involved at all given how he didn't seem terribly interested in solving the mystery himself. The unexpected
Spoilerbrutal murder backstory of the main character's parents, and her guilt about it being her fiance that did the murdering
, was incredibly out of left field, given that the rest of the book is pretty daft and light-hearted.
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