A GRAVE SITUATION Book Review

A Grave Situation (book 10 in Magnolia Manor series) by Joy Patrick, eBook, 166 pgs

Synopsis from Goodreads: A dirty, small town secret. Decades of cryptic disappearances. For Lilly, it’s now or never time. Despite the inn humming along with Gert and Brian as reliable employees and her relationship with Quigley in a good place, Lilly still can’t shake a nagging restlessness. When a local fishing tournament brings an eclectic group of guests to the inn, Lilly lets crass Gert take the reins so that she can dive headfirst into the latest FBI cold case—seemingly unconnected John Does who vanished over the decades.

Continuing to butt heads with lead agent Brock Armstrong, Lilly starts to feel she can do nothing right. But just when she thought things couldn’t get worse, a dead body shows up, and Lilly finds herself a prime suspect alongside one of her guests. As Lilly plunges deeper into the two cases, her mind racing with possible connections, she ventures far beyond her civilian scope and possibly her sanity, finding herself in the crosshairs of a killer who will stop at nothing to keep the past dead and buried.

With time running out and her own life at stake, Lilly uncovers a chilling truth: In this small town, some secrets are worth killing for.

BOOK REVIEW: I feel absolutely awful. The author reached out to me before this book was released a year ago and it fell off my radar. I am so glad that I finally read it I did remember that this was part of a series and not a book 1 so I knew that there would be characters involved in the story that would leave me head scratching as to how their relationship with the other characters came about. I fully plan to go back and read the others when I can because this gave me that small town cozy mystery feeling a lot like A Freshly Baked Cozy Mystery series. I really liked that. Now I don't know, yet, how Lilly got a civilian gig with the FBI (I know it has to be in book 1 or something) but it was still a fun read.

This is a quick read too. I think what I liked most about this is how much I kind of related to Lilly. Before my husband and I started dating, we had both been married and divorced. We had talked about how we couldn't see ourselves getting married again and that wasn't taken the wrong way by either of us. I kind of see that in Lilly's relationship with Quigley. I also like how Lilly went about connecting dots and how the younger FBI agents on the team were interested in hearing more while their senior agent hated to admit that she could be on to something.

Overall this is a 4.5 for me. Are the things that Lilly does completely unrealistic? No. Would she get away with it if this was real life? No absolutely not. But again, it's one of the fun and cozy things about these kinds of books that I enjoy. I actually think this would be a 5 star for me if I had read the other 9 books first but the story was good. It kept me engaged and reading later than normal and I definitely fell asleep mid-sentence a few times because it got so late! That's a great sign of a good book to me. I can't wait to read the other ones! I did notice that the series is part of the KU library except for book 1. The audiobook is also in the Audible member library but it has a virtual voice for the narrator meaning it is AI and not an actual person. I did not listen to the audiobook because I didn't think to check if it was in the library to give feedback on that as well but I might see if the other books are like that so I can give feedback.

4.5/5 Stars

2026 Reading Challenge: 40/55 complete