5th in this cozy series, Design To Die For, is an great addition. Set in the Hampton's, Meg is an interior designer helping to out a designer showcase together in her friends estate. Fun characters, a fast easy mystery.

I received this ARC via Netgalley and Beyond the Page Publishing, in return for an honest review. This is the fifth book in a series but is easily read as a stand-alone.  Meg Barrett owns a local interior design shop in Montauck, in the Hamptons.  Meg’s a unique lead character in cozy literature as she is hearing impaired and uses both hearing aids and lip reading to understand people around her.  Those around her include two of her best friends, Elle and Jenna.  Both Elle and Jenna are very, very wealthy and also live on Montauck.  Meg’s single, Elle is engaged, and Jenna is recently married to Roland, a man that’s turned into a horrible bully to Jenna and everyone around her.  This is obvious when Jenna offers her historic family home, recently renovated, as the Designer Showhouse for a group of interior designers to showcase their skills and raise funds for charity.  Roland decides to direct all the work and basically angers everyone involved, including his wife.  When he’s discovered dead on the night of the opening cocktail party, Meg and Jenna become prime suspects in his murder.  Anxious to clear their names, Meg channels all her skills to find out which of the other designers or townspeople would do such a horrible crime.  
This is a solid cozy mystery.  There are interesting tie-ins to historic homes in the area and their histories, as a sub-theme is whether Jenna’s home was designed by Stanford White.  The characters are well-written and the plot moves well.  I struggled a bit with Meg’s continued fixations on her former (cheating) fiancée as it appeared, she’d successfully transitioned from her former life and had good friends but that may be a carry-over plot from the previous books.

When life for the entire universe and planet turns on its end and like everyone else you "have nothing to do" while your place of work is closed and you are in #COVID19 #socialisolation,  superspeed readers like me can read 250+ pages/hour, so yes, I have read the book … and many more today. (I AM BORED!!) ANd it is too hot to go outside, so why not sit in from of the blasting a/c and read and review books??

I requested and received a temporary digital Advance Reader Copy of this book from #NetGalley, the publisher and the author in exchange for an honest review.  

From the publisher, as I do not repeat the contents or story of books in reviews, I let them do it as they do it better than I do 😸.

Montauk’s first annual Designer Showhouse was meant to be a collaborative event, so decorator Meg Barrett can only despair at the group of cutthroat designers scheming to sabotage each other on the project, not to mention the oddball collection of ghost hunters slinking around to investigate a supposedly haunted cottage. But when one of the owners of the showhouse is found murdered on the rocky beach below, Meg suddenly finds herself clashing with local police because of evidence that points to her as a prime suspect.

Desperate to clear her name and track down the real culprit, Meg discovers that many of her fellow designers despised the victim for his unscrupulous business dealings, while others were speculating about his extramarital affairs. And as more secrets emerge about both the deceased and the many outsiders who have come together for the showhouse, Meg realizes she’ll have to decipher a murky pattern of clues to escape the killer’s deadly designs on her . . .

Includes scrumptious recipes and vintage decorating tips!

Although this was 5th in a series of books, this was an easy book to get into and enjoy - I would personally, probably never use the decorating tips but the recipes were certainly yummy. The book was well crafted and I enjoyed the characters, most importantly, that beautiful greyhound. An easy read, for sure - it was not easy to guess who the murderer was, right off the bat, either. (There was a certain very highly paid mystery Irish-American writer who I generally guessed who the killer was the moment that they are introduced! However, as she recently passed perhaps I can pass on this advice: it is the same with your daughter's books.  ... lol)

I would normally say take this book to the beach with a tonne of SPF1000 sunscreen as you will lose track of time and end up fried to a crisp as a result. BUT, since we are supposed to be in self-isolation, read it on the porch, balcony, backyard, or even your bedroom. And take some vitamin D to make up for the lack of sunlight!)!)

As always, I try to find a reason to not rate with stars as I love emojis (outside of their incessant use by "🙏-ed Social Influencer Millennials/#BachelorNation survivors/Tik-Tok and YouTube  Millionaires/etc. " on Instagram and Twitter... Get a real job, people!) so let's give it 🏖️ 🏖️ 🏖️ 🏖️