Murder Between the Lines, by Thea Cambert is a 190-page contemporary cozy murder mystery. It is written from a third-person POV, one-sided.

I give this book a 3/5.

I do read other things other than romance. It’s just rare…lol. This is the first book in a series of “Rooftop Garden Cozy Mysteries”. If you aren’t adept with what cozy mysteries are let’s start with what they are and the top components that make one up.

• The protagonist is usually a woman and is some role that allows her to have easy access to gossip, thing Miss Marple from Agatha Christie novels. She’s a knitting granny. The protagonists also usually has access to law enforcement in some way
• It is usually set in a small town or village
• Any violence and sex (yes sex) are behind closed doors
• And usually there are silly red herrings to throw the reader and the protagonist off.

Alice owns a bookstore and on either side of her, her best friends own a bakery and a coffee shop. And together they make the ‘A-Squad’ (get it?..Alice…). Anyway, they all live above their shops (which sounds like it smells delicious) and they share a rooftop garden where they meet on the daily and have a 360 degree panoramic view of the fictional town Blue Valley, Tennessee.

Lucky for Alice, not only did she find the body, her brother is the sheriff of the town. The book itself was pretty fast paced and the author did a good job with setting up the stage for the murder as well as all the clues and tidbits she left behind.

General Thoughts:

1. It’s cute. I’ll most likely continue the series if I’m looking for an easy, quick read.
2. The book is well paced and the author set up the book for the protagonist up with the new detective that recently moved to town.
3. I don’t usually find cozy mysteries to have insane character growth or development because they are usually series that will span for awhile (think Hercule Poirot…yes I read a lot of Agatha growing up)
4. There were some subplots that didn’t get answered, so that was annoying. Like, why did the former prom queen even return to the town? She seemed to hate it, but returned anyway
5. Cozy mysteries are usually fun because you can figure out who the antagonist is before the end and this book didn’t disappoint. It was pretty easy to figure out who the murderer was.