Sacrifice at Sea by Susan Wingate ★★★☆☆

Fiction - Mystery

240 pages

Bobby's Diner Series #3

I received this ARC free from the author in exchange for a fair review.

Georgette Carlisle, finally can get a little of regular life and sort out her relationship with her new man, Willard Cleary, while relaxing during her Caribbean cruise.  Just as she thinks she is finally on even footing a murder on the ship causes their vacation to turn into a life and death situation.

While I am new to this series I found it fairly easy to get acquainted with.  This book was a quick and effortless read; rich in descriptions, observations and a mostly realistic tone.  Though, I have to say the dialogue, not exactly thrilling.  The characters were superbly crafted and the story was well developed.  This is not the typical action packed mystery so be open in your interpretation of what mystery can mean.  A majority of the action and story line is focused on Georgette’s inner life and her trying to adapt to a new relationship with Will.  I also applaud Ms. Wingate for having heroine outside of the 20-30 year range.  A lot life happens beyond early adulthood and I think it should be celebrated. The cruise ship was a great setting and I felt that Ms. Wingate used it to its best potential, exploring how a new place and situations can bring out different aspects of the characters’ personalities.  I will only say one thing about the climax and then leave it at that, shocking.

I debated long and hard on how to approach this one.  I guess I just never realized how hard it is to know the author a real person.  Me being me, I constantly reevaluated my opinions to make sure they were accurate.  While I stand by the 3 stars I gave Sacrifice at Sea, I do want to add something.  In the end, even though it had almost everything going for it and I appreciated a lot of things about it, I found myself still not enjoying the story or the writing style.  I didn’t hate it or have any strong feelings connected to it and frankly, I am chalking this up to a matter of preference.  It just wasn’t for me.  On the other hand I can understand how it would appeal to other people and why they might be willing to invest time into reading the series.