Callie never thought she’d return to her hometown of Cattail Island, leaving behind many bad memories years ago. But when she gets laid off from her job as a reporter, she finds herself needing a place to recharge and regroup.

Unsurprisingly, Callie finds the island hasn’t changed all that much. Most of the quirky residents she grew up still reside there, and many of the places she used to visit remain as well. In fact, this is how Callie ends reluctantly ends up taking a temporary job at the island’s beloved bookstore, the same place her mom considered a safe haven before tragically passing away years before.

The fact that Callie is returning home on the eve of her mother’s controversial death isn’t lost on anyone. Years ago, her mom took her own life after tumbling (or was it jumping?) from the top of town’s landmark lighthouse. Now years later, tragedy hits the town- and the lighthouse- again. The town chalks it up to a curse, but Callie is convinced there’s more to the story. But what, or who, is responsible for the eerily timed deaths, and can she find out before more tragedy strikes?

Smile Beach Murder is a cozy mystery for fans of Murder, She Wrote and Mary Higgins Clark, the author herself highly regarded in the story. The Nancy Drew fan in me loved seeing a strong female take on the task of solving the mystery. The colorful townspeople rounded out the whodunnit perfectly. I also loved the town bookstore, complete with a bookstore cat (my dream!). I learned that high place phenomenon is actually a thing, and if you don’t know what it is, look it up! It’s quite fascinating.

It doesn’t take a detective to see author, @aliciabessette (wife to another talented author, Matthew Quick), is sure to make her mark in the world of mystery with this release, case closed.

Alicia Bessette’s Smile Beach Murder combines an island setting with a death, a bookshop, a lighthouse, a treasure hunt, and a mystery. What could be more exciting? This first book in the Outer Banks Bookshop Mystery series captured my attention immediately and kept me engaged throughout.

Laid off from her reporter job, Callie Padget returns home to her home on fictional Cattail Island in the Outer Banks of North Carolina. She gets a part-time job at the local independent bookstore. As she makes contact with old friends and neighbors as well as some new ones, she searches for answers when there is a tragic death. However, investigations don’t go smoothly. She seems to upset everyone from the police to the local newspaper staff to the richest family on the island to the family of the deceased. Will Callie find the answers she’s looking for?

Callie is a likeable and relatable character that is tenacious in her pursuit of the truth. Many of the other characters had agendas that are revealed through their actions and inactions. Overall, the characterization is excellent with a protagonist that comes alive. Her will to find the truth generates a motivation that stirs the pot and results in a good conflict. I like the cast of characters for this book as each character had a very different perspective and distinct personalities. Tin Man, the bookstore cat with his own social media following, is a great addition to the cast of characters.

The descriptive narrative transported me to the coast of North Carolina. The story moved at a good pace that kept me reading. I thoroughly enjoyed the author and book references included throughout the novel. The author does a great job of balancing the shocking and tense aspects of the novel against the bookstore and community events. The well-plotted and beautifully executed story gradually builds momentum until it reaches the astonishing conclusion. There are plenty of red herrings in this story as well as some humor. Will you guess what happened and solve the puzzles? Other themes weaved into the novel include grief, friendship, secrets, and family. While I’ve seen this categorized as a cozy mystery, it has some topics and some action that is a little darker than many in the genre.

Overall, this story is a well-written and engaging novel with humor, suspense, some action, and the possibility of romance. If you’re a fan of the beach, puzzles, treasure hunts, bookstores, cats, and sleuth mysteries, then I recommend that you check out this one. It’s a good start to a series and I am looking forward to finding out what happens next on Cattail Island.

Berkley Publishing Group and Alicia Bessette provided a complimentary digital ARC of this novel via NetGalley. This is my honest review. Opinions are mine alone and are not biased in any way. Publication date is currently set for May 10, 2022. This review was originally posted at Mystery and Suspense Magazine.

I received a gifted galley of SMILE BEACH MURDER by Alicia Bessette for an honest review. Thank you to Berkley Publishing Group and Netgalley for the opportunity to read and review!

SMILE BEACH MURDER follows Callie as she returns to Cattail Island after being laid off from her reporting job. It is a place with strong memories tied to it, especially as she gets a job working part time at the local bookstore where she once spent time with her mother and where she spent a lot of time after her mother’s death. The island is also the place where her mother died, falling from the top of the lighthouse.

Not long after Callie’s return, another young woman is found dead at the foot of the lighthouse, not far from where Callie’s own mother was found. It is being called a suicide by the local police, but Callie is sure that it was not. Eva went to the lighthouse chasing a clue to a treasure hunt, something that may be behind her death. With no one else believing her suspicions, Callie must brush off her journalistic instincts and hunt down answers herself.

This was a fun cozy small town mystery and I enjoyed it! I though the author did a good job of laying out the mystery and Callie’s motives for wanting the answers she seeks. The Island is full of interesting characters as I’ve come to expect in this type of mystery and they provided some good entertainment and information tied to the mystery along the way! The grief and flashbacks of Callie’s memories of her mother were also well done.

This is definitely a good vacation read to add to your TBR!

Smile Beach Murder by Alicia Bessette has Callie Padget returning to Cattail Island, North Carolina. Callie has been laid off from her reporting job and is finding it a challenge to locate another newspaper job. She moves back into her old room in the loft at her uncle’s home and gets a position at MotherVine bookstore. Almost to the day of her mother’s death at the lighthouse, another body is found there. It is Eva Meeks who co-owns Meeks Hardware with her sister. Callie is one of the last people to speak with Eva. The police are ruling Eva’s death a suicide, but Callie does not believe it. Eva had been in the store the day before her death searching for information on her latest treasure hunt. Callie wonders if the search for the treasure led her to the lighthouse. With the police unwilling to explore another solution, Callie begins digging for the truth. Smile Beach Murder takes readers to the Outer Banks in North Carolina. I enjoyed the beautiful descriptions of the island. Alicia Bessette is a detail-oriented writer who brought scenes alive with her word imagery. All the things that make up a cozy mystery are included: a woman needing a fresh start, small beach town, cozy bookstore, bookstore cat, a mystery, curiosity (as a reporter she wants the truth to be revealed), and an eligible (and handsome) man. I love that the bookstore cat has his own Instagram account. “He” takes pictures around town. There is plenty of action as Callie works at the bookstore, investigates the mystery, and digs into the treasure hunt. I thought it was delightful that a treasure hunt was included (who doesn’t love a good treasure hunt). I enjoyed the reveal of the treasure hunt solution. The whodunit kept Callie busy. She actively searched for clues and asked questions. She came up with a couple of viable suspects. There is a dramatic reveal filled with tension. It depends on how many cozy mysteries you have read on when you will solve it. The clues are there is you pay close attention to the details. There are references to mystery novels throughout the story which I loved (one of my favorites was mentioned). I appreciate that the author took the time to set the stage with the setting and the main characters. It will be interesting to see what happens in the next An Outer Banks Bookshop Mystery. Smile Beach Murder is an enticing treasure with beautiful beaches, a low-ceilinged loft, a comfortable bookstore, a treacherous treasure hunt, a looming lighthouse, mystery novel mentions, an Instagram celebrity cat, and a probing reporter.

Callie Padget is still feeling emotionally fragile about her return to Cattail Island, where she grew up on North Carolina’s Outer Banks. Alas, after being let go as a journalist from the Charlotte newspaper she’d worked for, she has few other options. Her Uncle Hudson welcomes her home with open arms, readying her old bedroom for her to inhabit once more, so at least her living situation is accounted for. Unfortunately, jobs aren’t quite as easy to come by, even as Callie pretends that occasionally updating her blog is enough to count as resume-building.

When averting a potentially fatal accident leads to her becoming employed at the MotherVine Bookstore, Callie is both happy to be working again and sad to be so sharply reminded of her late mother, who had brought her there to spend many happy hours together. Teri Padgett had been a seamstress who was an aficionado of Mary Higgins Clark, and who passed on her love of mysteries to her daughter. MotherVine’s owner, Antoinette Redfield, is an old friend, and is delighted to have Callie working for her.

Other old friends seem a little more distant, though that could very well be due to Callie’s own choice to turn her back almost entirely on the island when she left. Eva Meeks, owner of the local hardware store, is one of the islanders on the friendly side. She comes to the MotherVine one day in search of a book that might help with her favorite pastime – treasure hunts – after finding something that points her in the direction of the Smile Beach lighthouse. Unthinkingly, she invites Callie to come with her. She instantly takes it back when she remembers that the reason Callie was so intent on leaving the island in the first place is the fact that Callie’s mother died in a fall from that very same lighthouse when Callie was just a kid.

So when Callie finds out the next day that Eva too has fallen to her death from the top of the lighthouse, she’s immediately stricken. Not only is it almost a quarter-century to the day since her mother died. A more grown-up guilt strikes her now: if she’d gone with Eva, could she have saved the other woman from dying?

Police Chief Drew Jurecki is uninterested in dealing with her when she arrives at the scene, noting fairly:

QUOTE
“Not to be harsh, but I can’t deal with emotions right now. There’ll be enough of that when I inform the next of kin.”

Next of kin.

Georgia. And Summer, Eva’s daughter. Eva had been forty-one years old, I knew. Which meant Summer was…twelve.

Just like my mom had been forty-one when she died, and I’d been twelve.
END QUOTE

This is too much coincidence for Callie to ignore. When Chief Jurecki rules Eva’s death a suicide, the case is officially closed. Callie, however, refuses to leave it alone. She used to be an investigative reporter back in the city, and her instincts are telling here that there’s far more to this story than a “simple” suicide. After Summer seeks her out in order to share what Eva had been looking for on the night she died, Callie discovers a brand new angle from which to investigate: had Eva died because someone had been desperate to prevent her from solving the clues of an ancient treasure hunt?

Even as she pursues this new lead, her complicated emotions have her worrying that she’s really doing all this for herself. It would be one thing if she was searching for closure for the teenage girl she used to be, who was scarred by her mother’s death. Instead, she can’t help but wonder whether she’s also using the tragedy as her ticket out of Cattail once more. Fortunately, her Uncle Hudson is there to help straighten her out:

QUOTE
“This riddle means Eva climbed the lighthouse with a purpose,” he said. “A purpose other than jumping. Somebody’s got to set the record straight.”

The record.

My plan to write up Eva’s death suddenly seemed ill-conceived, despite my honorable intentions. How could I even think about advancing my career while Georgia and Summer’s loss was clinging to me like smoke from a campfire, permeating my pores?

No. In no way did I want to risk exploiting or upsetting the Meeks family by writing about them. I couldn’t. I wouldn’t.

But–as Hudson had just reminded me–the record.
END QUOTE

Alicia Bessette’s debut mystery novel is a sensitive tale of a reporter coming home to face her demons and, hopefully, lay them to rest. I wasn’t super thrilled by the way Callie rushed to judgment at times, but appreciated how Ms Bessette used those moments to show her heroine’s fallibility. That’s a good sign for an on-going series, as Callie learns to embrace her present and come to terms with her past, while solving crimes in the process.

Absolutely LOVED this one! It had a cute small beach town (totally made me thing of Emily Henry’s beach read) but had a great mystery too! I almost wish I saved this for summer since it’s the perfect summer read, but in the end I’m glad I read it early! This way I can recommend it to my customers

I wish I could have gotten into this book but after several tries I gave up. I'm not sure what was wrong, the writing was excellent, the setting interesting and the characters diverse. Perhaps it was just me, but for some reason I couldn't keep reading. I hope you fare better with this book. It looks promising.

SMILE BEACH MURDER started off strong but unfortunately was not able to hold my attention after the first few chapters. I do believe that this is more of a "me" problem than the book itself - I think that fans of the cozy mystery genre would LOVE this one. I hope to give this one another shot in the future.

This book was an absolute delight! I don’t know about you but I’m SO ready for summer, and have clearly been reading titles for give me those summer vibes.

I was lucky enough to receive an early copy of Smile Beach Murder, the first in a new series and I devoured it! I’ll be sharing my full review as part of the book’s tour with Berkley on 5/9 but pick this one up if you love the following:

✔️ adorable small beach town setting
✔️ a swoonworthy bookstore
✔️ an Instagram famous cat
✔️ plenty of references to other mystery novels you’ll recognize and love
✔️ the perfect mix of twists and turns
✔️ characters who will get introduced and get you excited for future titles in the series, but add just enough to the story

Thank you Berkley + Netgalley for the chance to read and review this title in exchange for my honest review.

This was a well-executed drama that I could not put down, quickly becoming a page-turner. I was immediately immersed in all aspect from the introduction of Callie till the end when the killer’s identity was revealed. The author knows how to pull a story together with a great multi-plot tale where the protagonist had to prove that a suicide was not, but instead a murder. The ins and outs of Callie trying to decipher every clue she picked up would eventually lead to someone not liking her involved in this business. I liked her determination to right a wrong and, in the process, crossed a journey she needed to come to grip with. With visually descriptive narrative, engaging dialogue, and a small-town feel, I was enraptured with the whole scenario. There were a few surprises in store for this reader, but it all worked out when the killer was apprehended. Overall, this was a delightfully enjoyable whodunit and I look forward to more adventures with Callie and Toby.

Returning to her hometown after losing her job on the mainland, Callie takes a job at the local bookstore as she decides what to do next. A friend's suspicious suicide, twenty-four years after her mothers, sets Callie on a journey to investigate the truth.

This novel was everything I could ever want in a cozy mystery. I loved how detailed the descriptions of the tourist town were. Even though I have never been to the Outer Banks, I was able to see the town and all its summer beauty in my mind as I read the novel. That, combined with the detailed character of Callie, really made this novel stand above other cozy mysteries I have read in the past.

I also appreciated that the author brought a sense of literature into the world of Callie. Callie didn't just work in a bookstore but gained strength and knowledge from books she read in her younger years. I think this is relatable to any avid reader.

I could not have been happier with Smile Beach Murder and look forward to reading future books by Alicia Bessette.

I am reviewing this title for Mystery Scene Magazine summer issue, please see my full review there when it publishes in May

Ok so I devoured SMILE BEACH MURDER by Alicia Bessette. A brilliant cozy mystery that I was blown away by and hooked to from the very beginning.
Things just keep happening that pumps the constant flow of intrigue throughout this unputdownable book. The surprising twists and turns that will leave the reader stunned.
I enjoyed this particular story for all the twists and turns it leaves behind.
A beautiful blend that keeps those pages turning.
These characters are likable and relatable and the bond they've formed is undeniable.
This was one heck of a whodunit that I didn't want to set this aside.
Alicia Bessette delivers delightful characters, a gripping mystery and a superbly written story!
This book deserves all the star's!

Berkley,
I can't thank you enough for the opportunity to read and review this title.
I will post and tag my review to my blog and platforms close to pub date

Beaches? Bookstores? Best buds? Smile Beach Murder has them all!

Callie Padget has lost her job, her apartment, her furniture, everything that had defined who she became after losing her mother. Back on Cattail Island she finds her uncle, Hudson, and his Gang still playing poker and welcoming Callie home. Antoinette, one of the Gang and a good friend of Callie's mother, gives her a job working in the MotherVine bookstore. Callie's first day on the job brings in Eva Meeks, the older sister of one of Callie's school friends. Eva is on the hunt for a treasure and calls Callie late one night to invite her to join in her quest. The following morning, Eva is found dead at the foot of the lighthouse. The police are convinced Eva committed suicide but Callie is convinced there's something more sinister behind her friends' demise.

This book checks off all the boxes for a cozy mystery. Young woman, single, lost her job, staring over again, works in a bookstore, cat, intriguing single man who's new in town. Check, check, check. Some people might find that disappointing but I love all the comfortable cozy tropes. I also love books set on the beach so I was really excited to read this book.

Callie sets off to find out what happened to Eva, who has left a 12-year-old daughter orphaned, just like Callie's mother did when she passed away 26 years earlier. In trying to figure out what happened to Eva, Callie digs up information on several people in town including the owner of a local furniture manufacturer, a hardware store employee, and the lighthouse keeper, while also continuing the treasure hunt that lead Eva to her death.

There was no lull in the action in this book. Callie is busy working, getting to know Cattail Island again, and hunting down clues to get answers for Eva's daughter, Summer. All the characters Callie meets have their own secrets, which kept me guessing until the very end. I was never able to wager a guess as to who the guilty party may have been. Anyone who enjoys cozy beach reads should check out this new series.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an ARC.

Took me a little while to get into this book but once I did found it enjoyable. Looking forward to reading more.