UNBRIDLED HAUNTINGS by Misty Simon
Fiction, Cozy Mystery, Paranormal
5*****
Blurb: What’s a girl to do when the past comes back to haunt you? With her colorful past, Iona Hoover is hoping for a bland and beige future when she moves back to Chincoteague Island in Virginia to help her aunt run a pet treat store called Unbridled Bliss. But when she finds a dead body, suddenly her whole world goes topsy-turvy. She’d grown up in turmoil and had relied on her imaginary friends to vent to when she was little. But now the quartet she’d called the Silver Bettys is back and they weren’t her imagination, they’re ghosts. They want to help her solve the mystery but there’s only so much they can do according to the rules of the afterlife. Iona will take all the help she can get though and when she uncovers some secrets in the small town that others would like to keep hidden, she knows she’ll need every ghost on deck to figure out whodunnit or she could very well be joining the Silver Bettys on the other side.
Thoughts: I loved this book! The characters are fun, especially the “Silver Bettys”—the ghosts who make Iona’s life a lot more interesting. And the setting – the story takes place on Chincoteague Island, a place I have visited.
Iona is technically an ER nurse who burned out so left that job to help her aunt out at her specialized bakery for pets. But things really go strange when a man wanders in and demands coffee (thinking he’s at a coffee shop three doors down). Iona shares her pot with him and he leaves but drops something. When she tries to return it, she finds him dead. And then the fun begins. She and her best friend (who had a True Crime pod cast) and the man she’d had a crush on for years start gathering clues. And her “imaginary friends” from when she was a child are helping them. But no one can see the ghosts except her. It makes for some creative instances.
Overall, this is a fun story with great characters and a unique setting.
Definitely recommended.
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