Book Review | Dating Dr. Dil by Nisha Sharma
January 21, 2023Protected: Weekly Update | 29 Jan 2023
January 29, 2023XX pages
Published: August 2023
Read:
Perfect for fans of Jenn McKinlay and Ellery Adams, Rain Wilmot must find a novel solution in order to catch another killer—before her book club members are picked off one by one.
Summer is in full swing as tourists flock back to the Northwoods and travel to Lofty Pines, Wisconsin. For Rain Wilmot, owner of the Lakeside Library, this is the perfect opportunity to bring back her mother’s summer book club. But the summer sun starts to really heat up when one of the club’s members, Lily Redlin, is found dead in her own home not long after the first meeting.
Alongside her sidekick and neighbor Julia Reynolds and the charming Jace Lowe, Rain discovers that the murder is seemingly inspired by the book club’s recent selection of Agatha Christie’s classic mystery novel, Sparkling Cyanide. But who would kill Lily, and more importantly, why?
The deeper Rain goes into the story, the more confusing and complicated the plot becomes. Was Lily murdered to cover up a tragic accident involving an old classmate years earlier? Or were the rumors true—did Lily really possess priceless original Laura Ingles Wilder manuscripts and someone killed her for them? And who stands to gain the recently inherited piece of waterfront property that Lily received from a long-lost relative?
With a long list of suspects and motives, Rain realizes that all leads come back to people involved in the book club. Rain and her friends take a page from Agatha Christie’s book by hosting a reenactment of the club’s first meeting to flush out the killer. Will Rain’s plan succeed—or will this librarian’s book be checked out for good?
Trigger Warnings: death of a spouse
Main Characters
- Rain
- Marge
- Julia
- Nick – Julia’s husband
- Benzo – Rain’s new dog that she gets because it’s owner had just died in a car accident
- Jace – Julia’s brother; love interest of Rain’s
- Pearl – works at the Waters Edge Library, hours away; friends with Marge
- Patrick Gleason – died when he was 17 in a boating accident
- Jimmy Callaway – was driving the boat when Patrick died
Book Club members:
- Kim Rogers – exhausted mother of twins
- Lily Redlin – recently purchased a lake house cottage
- Shelby Sullivan
- Naomi Mosley, a realtor
- Chelsea McAdams
- Ruth Thompson
- Hannah – nurse that sits in the second meeting of the book club when Kim couldn’t make it
My Review
This is the third book in the Lakeside Library Mystery series. I read it as a standalone since I hadn’t read any of the prior books. I didn’t feel like I missed anything in the series except some of the background on the other mysteries the girls had solved and the death of Rain’s husband. I did really like this book, it was cozy, and I always love a cozy mystery that takes place with a library. Throw a dog in the mix, and you can’t go wrong. I do think that the three different storylines for why Lily would’ve been murdered got a little bit convoluted and one of them was probably unnecessary.
Likes
- References to Agatha Chritie
- The cozy setting of a log cabin turned library
Dislikes
- The note… and then trying to find the culprit with handwriting; why would someone leave a note? and why wouldn’t they disguise their handwriting?
Spoilers
u003cstrongu003eWarningu003c/strongu003e: This section contains spoilers! Do not expand this section if you don’t want to be spoiled!
The options for the killer – someone related to the boating accident death when hey were teens of Patrick Gleason, someone who thinks she has the lost manuscripts of Laura Ingles Wilder, someone involved in a property that she is set to inherit worth millions
Hannah ends up being a killer for two reasons. The main reason was monetary. Lily was that to inherit the property of a long lost uncle that Hannah had done hospice care for. The uncle had said that if he could find his niece, he would give her his estate. Hannah also is dating Jimmy, the guy that pushed Patrick off the boat when they were 17 she wants to protect him. It also turns out that Shelby had been on the boat at the same time as the accident, and saw what happened but she has been in love with Jimmy.