Score: 3.5/5 Bookmarks

Thank you to Kensington and BiblioLifestyle for gifting me a review copy of Much Ado About Nauticaling by Gabby Allan. This is the first in a new cozy Whit and Whiskers mystery series.

I'm all about cozy mysteries lately! Whitney Dagner has left corporate LA behind and gone home to Santa Catalina Island to help her brother run the family business, Nautically Yours. She's signed up to pilot the Sea Bounder, their glass-bottom boat. Tourists expect to see fish, plant, and other marine life, but a dead body isn't part of the ticket price!

When fingers start being pointed at Whitney's brother Nick she sets out to clear his name and investigate the murder herself.

This book is marketed as a 'rom-cozy' but it really only has the slight amount of romance that a lot of cozy mysteries have, so don't go into it expecting it to be heavy on the romance by any means. I would have liked a little more sass and to feel like I got to know the characters a little better, but I did enjoy the setting quite a lot.

If you love small-town mysteries you might enjoy this one. It makes a good by-the-pool read.

Synopsis:

After far too many years in the Los Angeles corporate world, Whitney Dagner has come home to Santa Catalina Island off the California coast to help her brother Nick run Nautically Yours, the family tourism business. Between gift shop shifts selling all manner of T-shirts and tchotchkes and keeping her feline Whiskers in fine fettle, she pilots the Sea Bounder, a glass bottom boat showing tourists the underwater sights of aquatic plants, marine life--and a murder victim?

The self-proclaimed Master of the Island, Jules Tisdale was a wealthy man with business interests throughout Catalina who was about to be honored as Person of the Year before someone strangled him with his own tie and tossed his body into the water. That someone appears to be Nick, who had a raw deal from Jules and no alibi the night of his murder. To clear her brother's name, Whit will have to investigate Jules' shady associates and not exactly grief-stricken family members--with the unwelcome help of Felix Ramirez, police diver and Whit's ex-boyfriend who's looking to rekindle their relationship.