Murder at Pirate's Cove

I dunno....that was kind of...bad? Maybe unoriginal is a better word. At 2.5x speed on audio, it was palatable; I'm pretty sure I would have skimmed parts if I was reading physically. I did love the idea of a slow burn romance, the introduction of puppy, of little old lady who knows her mysteries, of the potential of fixing up an old property and getting more involved with the community, even a main character who's bad at life-preserving decisions and at lying. 🤦🏼‍♂️ There's actually the possibility that if I treat this whole book as a prologue, I could like the next in the series a lot more. There are a fair amount of easy shortcut stereotypes/two dimensional/brief descriptions in the characters introduced, but if I think of it as a Harlequin romance with a mystery twist, it's not any worse than a lot of books I read in my late teens/early twenties. For those who, like me, find it kind of shady, heads up that this M/M romance is not own voices rep as it is written by a woman under a pen name. 🙄 Not to disparage some truly wonderful writing I have encountered in that space, but finding out the author previously wrote fanfic, is not surprising. If you're looking for a few hours of brain off diversion, you might enjoy it.