Gabby Allan Follow

Much ado about Nauticaling follows Whitney Dagner. She and her brother Nick have recently inherited a boat tour company from their grandparents, located on Santa Catalina Island off the coast of California. While she visited the island many times while growing up, she has recently returned from the mainland permanently dragging along her room mate Maribel, who works as a receptionist in the local Sheriff’s office, and seemingly followed by her ex boyfriend Felix, who also works with the police. Her grandparents are a hoot, if a bit cliche. They, especially Goldy, strike a good balance between being flakey, super meddlesome and perfectly helpful at just the right moments.

I do love it when I know who done it, but end up second guessing myself because I can’t figure out why, and there are just so many juicy suspects to play with. That was certainly the case here. The mystery offers a plethora of clues, plenty of red herrings (which makes sense in a seaside town) and just the right pacing to keep the story moving along and the reader guessing.



This story has all the promise of a good cozy series. The setting is wonderful. There are some terrific characters and the author obviously knows how to tell a story. Still, the amateur sleuth seems sometimes a bit too amateur, so much so that she hangs a lantern on it more than once. With a constant inner monologue, she is at times a bit erratic and people talk to her a bit too easily, even when she makes it clear that she is theorizing their involvement, or that of someone they care about, in the crime. Also, the small town cops are a bit too shallow and rigid, not merely a bit incompetant.

While it may be trying to cram a few too many cozy tropes into the plot, there is much to recommend this series going forward and I would enjoy another visit to Avalon in the future to see what these characters are getting up to.

⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4 out of 5.
I received an advance review copy for free through Great Escapes Virtual Book Tours, and I am leaving this review voluntarily