Closely Harbored Secrets by Bree Baker

This’d was a great read.  The characters were so friendly and loved their small town.  The book told how people can get carried away with the history and ancestors of their family.  The plot was well-written.  I recommend this book.

Thanks Net Galley for sending me an advanced reader’s copy for review.

Well... I love tea, small towns, budding romances, mystery, and murder, so this series has everything!! I love all of Everly's relationships, romantically, family, community, and even the one with a seagull lol.  

The setting and characters, paired with the writing style, make you feel like you are visiting old friends when you read the next installment.  

It's Halloween, and of course, a murder afoot.  This installment involves going back into the town's history. Could the clues really be leading to an old treasure?  Is there any truth to the legends and folklore?  And, is any of this worth killing for?  Hopefully Everly can figure out the mystery before she becomes part of the legend.

I highly recommend this series.  It has a strong female protagonist with a very close family and a strong sense of community.  This series is so much more than just a Cozy Mystery.

An entertaining and well written cozy mystery.  Good plot, nice setting and believable characters.  I received an advance ebook from the publisher and Netgalley and this is my unbiased review.

Fun read, very quick. Part of a series, but can be read as a stand alone if you keep in mind you won’t know and love the characters as much, know their histories and don’t mind references to pst books/mysteries. 

Everly runs a tea shop and is helping to host a Halloween event in Charm.  When she discovers a dead body the adventure takes off.  Full of relatable characters, twists, turns and ghosts this was a great read. The recipes at the back are worth a try too!

Thank you NetGalley, Bree Baker and Marsal Literary Agency Publication for this edition and hearing my honest review. Looking forward to reading more with you
#partner

This is one of my favorite cozy mystery series. Everly is stalked by someone obsessed with a pirate map and an urban legend of the small town of Charm. I loved the pirate aspect to the story and look forward to the next book.

Another excellent edition to a wonderful series! Full of twists and turns that leaves you wanting more and enjoying each moment until the end when the killer is caught!

The characters in this series have become old friends by now, and I thoroughly enjoyed this 
installment.

Everly  Swan owns a house in Charm, North Carolina, where she has a tea cafe set up on the first floor while living upstairs. Halloween is coming and the ghost tours of Charm are a popular event. Unfortunately, Every finds a murdered woman plus the ghost of a creepy sailor starts following her around halfher. This book was definitely a four and a half star one for me, a d I have loved all the ones that I have read in the series. Every is bright and inquisitive without doing too many dangerous things. Sun, sand, tea and ghosts all combine for a couple hours of reading pleasure. Enjoy!

I love reading about Everly and her family, along with Grady and Denver. Another fantastic story with very real elements of childhood loss. Great story!

I like this series.  I enjoy the small town of Charm, the interesting and relatable Swan women, the delicious goodies and ice teas served at the shop, and the mystery that delves more into local legends.  As a bookseller, I am especially charmed by all the scenes that take place in the local bookshop.  It seems that the series might be taking a bit more of a supernatural twist in the coming books so it will be interesting to see how that plays out.

I have dipped in and out of this series and kicked things off in book 2 with No Good Tea Goes Unpunished, followed by book three Tide and Punishment. I have yet to read book one, Live and Let Chai and book four, A Call For Kelp.

In this one, Closely Harbored Secrets, the fifth instalment in Bree Baker's Seaside Café Mystery series, protagonist Everly Swan is closing her seaside café and iced tea shop, Sun, Sand and Tea early to help out her great aunts with their annual Halloween haunted walking tour. However, when one of the ghostly actors playing a local legend is found dead, Everly becomes the main suspect as her name was scratched into the dirt nearby.

What highly entertaining mix of mystery and mayhem! This wonderful cozy mystery, set on the small island of Charm, North Carolina was both compelling and enjoyable. It made perfect reading for me between other more intense novels. It was funny, witty and quirky with a fantastic plot. The characters were very well drawn by Bree Baker, and I especially liked Everly’s great-aunts, Clara and Fran for their spirit-lifting moments.

This book was a great package of fun and excitement and it was a perfect book to enjoy with a drink of specially blended tea and a homemade scrumptious treat or two. I really appreciated the clever writing from Bree Baker in this novel which kept me intrigued right to the end. The conclusion was a surprise and the author did a wonderful job wrapping up the story.

With its great story and wonderful characters, I would recommend Closely Harbored Secrets to all cozy mystery lovers out there who are wanting an easy weekend read. I hope it won't be very long before I'm back visiting Charm and Sun, Sand and Tea.

I received a complimentary copy of this novel at my request from Poisoned Pen Press via NetGalley. This review is my own unbiased opinion.

Although I had a difficult time getting into this one at first, I ended up enjoying it. I love Everly's iced tea business, and the little island of Charm, NC is adorable. The murder was clever and fun to solve, and i'd recommend this to anyone who loves cozy mysteries.

I loved this one. I have loved all of the books in this series and find the characters and town to being so cozy and charming. This one was especially enjoyable because it featured a historical mystery and I am a sucker for those. I loved the intrigue, the way the murder took place and all of the little historical details that led us to the conclusion. I also loved the relationship developments in this one! I highly reccommend starting with the first book in the series though to really get a good feel for the town and characters.

I enjoyed this fifth book in the Seaside Cafe mystery series. I loved the ghost walk elements.. The aunts are still some of my favorite characters. Their quirkiness adds to the Practical Magic vibes of the this cozy mystery series. I do think I would have enjoyed this one more if I had read it closer to Halloween than in January.

I loved this book!  I loved the history and the bit of spookiness that it contained.  It is just a fun read! Everly Swan is a great character and the aunts were amazing! 

My only problem is that it took me awhile to get into the story.  I really think that I need to go back and read the first 4 installments.  

Thank you to NetGalley and Poisoned Pen Press for the opportunity to read and review this book.

This was an intriguing and entertaining book. Well written and excellent characterization. This is the first book I've read by this author and look forward to reading more. I was given an ebook ARC by Netgalley and this is my voluntary and honest review.

This is another enjoyable addition to the Seaside Cafe Mystery series set in Charm on the Outer Banks of North Carolina with likable, interesting characters, a great island setting with a rich history of pirates and treasures, and a murder mystery to solve. It is Halloween week and the story begins with a Ghost Walk along the island led by Clara Swan with different stops along the way. Everly Swan owns a tea shop in her Victorian home and is supplying food for the event. All is going well until one of the character ghosts is found injured and then dies at one of the stops on the walk. Everly S is written in the dirt by her. Everly didn't even know the victim, Dixie Wetherill, but she is still a suspect. Detective Grady Hays, a very close friend of Everly's, has to investigate and Everly cannot resist helping him against his wishes. Dixie is not well liked so a lot of people could have wanted her dead, including someone she outbid for a collectable book, and others. Someone is leaving clues around threatening Everly and all seem to be from a man dead almost two hundred years. In addition to layers of clues, all is not well between Grady and Everly but someone is waiting to date Everly. Everly's aunts Clara and Fran are busy with their bee products shop and Fran is running for mayor with some stiff opponents. Everly's best friend and book shop owner, Amelia, has a new children book and release party. There's never a dull moment in Charm and this is a story that kept me interested to the end. Looking forward to the next one.
I received a complimentary ARC from Poisoned Pen Press through NetGalley. All thoughts and opinions are mine only.

One of my favorite authors and book. If you haven't read it yet I highly recommend it. Bree baker writes several different series

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review. It is set to be published in December 2020.

"Closely Harbored Secrets" by Bree Baker is a cozy mystery investigating into the murder of an elderly island historian where every clue seems to point at Everly Swan, the protagonist of the Seaside Café Mystery series, as the culprit.
I really appreciated the originality of the premise (ghosts, buried pirate treasures, hauntings, a cursed protagonist...) and the fact that, although this novel is the fifth instalment in a series, it reads well enough as a standalone.
What I didn't appreciate was the pacing: it's way too slow--the style is wordy and repetitive, there's way too much talking, way too little action. The interesting parts are there, but they're too far-between, interspersed with all the things I as a reader could have done without, like all the drama about the mayoral election - which has no ties to the main plot, by the way - and all the painstakingly detailed descriptions of food. Those parts got tiresome to read after a while, they felt pointless.
Another thing that could have been better is the characterization: the characters are flat, one-dimensional, and none of them shows any growth throughout the story: they end up exactly the same from start to finish, no change at all, except maybe for the murder victim, who gets some character development in the final chapters, but she's - you know - a murder victim, so that doesn't count as real growth, since she's dead.
Anyway, kudos to the author for some awesome body positivity remarks sprinkled here and there throughout the story. We need more books to promote this message.
Overall, this book was not for me, but other readers might love it.

4.5 stars

This is the fifth book in the Seaside Cafe mystery series by Bree Baker.

I always love Bree Baker’s books and this was no exception. Wow, what a delightful read. This one is perfect for the history lover since many plot points harken back to old town history. A dead body of one of the actors is found during a halloween walking tour and Everly Swan is off to the races finding  the culprit.

The characters here are so fun and easy to relate to. You can easily get lost in the story. I was particularly curious why the dead person wrote Everly’s name before dying.

You just can’t go wrong with this series. It can easily be read as a standalone but I suggest you checkout the entire series. It is that good.

If you like cozy mysteries, definitely check this one out. You won’t be disappointed.

I received this as an ARC (Advanced Reader Copy) in return for an honest review. I thank NetGalley, the publisher and the author for allowing me to read this title.