I am new to the Lucy Stone books, and had no problem feeling a part of the family right away. From the get go, the novel felt very niche and formulaic, but I think that's how these cozy mysteries are. The story was fun. The characters stayed true to their quirks, nothing too scary happened, and there was a tidy happy ending. In fact, I don't think I have ever read a book where the very last word was, "tummy." If this is a genre you like, go for it! If you need something less fluffy, leave this one on the shelf.

Book Title: Mother of the Bride
Series: Lucy Stone Mystery Book #29
Author: Leslie Meier
Narrator: Coleen Marlo
Publisher: Dreamscape Media
Genre: Cozy Mystery
Pub Date: April 25, 2023
My Rating: 3.3 Stars

This is Book #29 in the Lucy Stone Mystery Series. Although I have only read three they were all an enjoyable read. When I read my first my comments was “What a fun nice surprise, looking forward to another [author: Leslie Meier|138662] story.

Lucy Stone is lives in the tiny seaside village of Tinker’s Cove Maine.
She and hubby Bill are now ‘empty-nesters’ as their four children are all adults. Son Toby and his wife Molly who were high school sweethearts now live in Alaska with their pre-teen son, Patrick. The three daughters finished college – Sarah and Zoe and live nearby however eldest daughter Elizabeth is a concierge at 5 Stars hotel in Paris.

Lucy is a reporter for the local paper but also still very much an amateur sleuth.

Lucy gets a call from Elizabeth with the announcement that she is getting married to Jean-Luc Schoen-Ren who is not only handsome but also very successful. Elizabeth has invited the entire Stone family is attend the wedding but to also stay at her wealth future in-law’s country chateau.

However, once Lucy is in France she has a feeling that this marriage may not be the fairytale Elizabeth has dreamed about.
Lucy’s fears get greater when Grandson Patrick helps pull out a body from a moat on the property. A young woman has dropped dead under mysterious circumstances.
It appears there are some negative things going on in paradise!

Lucy puts aside her 'mother of the bride hat' and puts on her investigative hat to find what happened.

I started out really liking this but then wasn’t happy that this family was so dysfunctional. I did miss many in this series so missed character development ~ perhaps their behavior isn’t a surprise to other readers. .
I loved daughter-in-law Molly but grandson Patrick was . . . . . well a disappointment I do realize that preteens can be Doctor Jekyll or Mr. Hyde in any given minute - but I totally wanted to put him in time-out.
Again I missed the earlier stories so might have seen this behavior coming.

The family was so excited about being France; however when there is a shooting at the wedding with a member of the wedding party I was sure Lucy was going to spring into action. Instead she and the rest of the family wanted to get back home. What???

Story definitely had ups and downs for me!
Hate giving only 3 stars as I wanted to love this!

I did like narrator Colleen Marlo ~ she did a great job in performing the characters!

But I have no doubt that I will give this series another chance and will read the next story by Ms. Meier!

Want to thank NetGalley and Dreamscape Media for this early audio edition.
Publishing Release Date scheduled for April 25, 2023

This was my first Lucy Stone book, I actually didn’t realise it was a series so I may go and read some others. I don’t believe you had to have read the others before reading this one.
The Stone family travel to France to the eldest daughters wedding and a few days before the wedding a dead body is found in the moat and then someone is shot at the wedding.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advance copy of this book.

Mother of the Bride Murder was good! I have never read a Leslie Meier book before and It was just what I expected. Her writing reminds me of someone else’s and I can’t put my finger on it. There were parts where I was like hmm.. I don’t like that. But everything else went smoothly. The narrator did a great job and I would definitely read another one of their books.

Thanks to Netgalley and Dreamscape Media for the early access to this audiobook.

Lucy Stone is my original cozy mystery heroine, and she has not lost her touch in Mother of the Bride Murder. Equal parts wife, mom, reporter, and sleuth, Lucy has a nose for detecting and when a body pops up in the lake right before her daughter's French wedding, Lucy is on the case! It was really nice to see the entire Stone clan together in this story, and I hope author Leslie Meier and Lucy have many, many more adventures in store!

Note for longtime listeners: the narrator is new to the series, and does a fine job! A+

This is only my second book in the Lucy Stone series, so I’m not reading in order, which may impact my impressions. Overall, I love Lucy and her family but felt the other characters and narrative didn’t draw me in:

Lucy and her family take a trip to France to celebrate her daughters upcoming nuptials and stay at the chateau of her future in-laws. I love how much Lucy pushes to have the whole family together and her can-do attitude, and it was fun to have a chateau as the setting.

I also really enjoyed that we got a lot of detail into Lucy and her family dynamic, but the future in-laws fell flat to me. We didn’t really get a sense of their family dynamic or how they interacted. They all felt more like co-workers than family. I particularly would’ve loved for there to be more about Jean-Luc and what drew Elizabeth to him (other than his chateau).

The end of the book felt a bit rushed to me, and I didn’t feel as connected to the characters. I wish Lucy had done more investigating whereas the ending kinda fell into place without it.

I loved the audiobook narrator and felt she really brought the American characters to life.

Thank you to #NetGalley and #DreamscapeMedia for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This was my first Lucy Stone mystery. I had no issues with picking up on the previously established relationships. Lucy and family are headed to France for the marriage of her daughter. The setting is a beautiful chateau where Elizabeth’s fiancé and family live. Relatively quickly Lucy starts to notice that things may not be as grand as they seem. Especially after a young woman’s body is discovered.

Something I did not know about this book when I received it was it’s the 29th book in a series. That’s a lot of books and I immediately felt overwhelmed. Fortunately, this book can be enjoyed as a stand-alone so it was welcoming to newcomers to the series. I did feel I would have enjoyed it more if I was more attached to some characters but it was still worth it.

A note to my mother, if you are reading this I need to know if you wrote this book. Lucy says some things that my mother says and I felt the guilt through the pages. Her kids are spread out across the world and she guilts her kids saying “I just want all my kids together”. This is what my mother asks for all holidays. So if this is you please come clean. If it’s not you, this book made me feel a little uncomfortable with the amount of guilt Lucy threw at her kids in the beginning. Luckily that didn’t last long.

Lucy is a reporter and when a dead body shows up right before her daughter's wedding she could not help herself and she went right into reporter mode. The way the investigation played out was very enjoyable. It had me engaged the whole way through.

I liked all of Lucy’s family but I just couldn’t get past the resemblance to my mother when it came to Lucy so I have to say she was my favorite character.

I don’t know if I’m going to go back to the first book which came out about 25 years ago but I think I will check out more books from this series.

Lucy is surprised to learn that her daughter, Elizabeth, who works in a hotel in France, has finally met someone and is about to get married. So the whole family flies to France to assist with the wedding, that will be held in a château owned by her fiancé, Jean-Luc, and his family. But in the days leading up to the ceremony, Lucy worries that Jean-Luc and his family are using Elizabeth. Until she has a body to worry about...
This is a cozy mystery, book 29 in the Lucy Stone series. It was fun to see some of the usual characters, which is why I think you really should read the entire series, but it totally can be read as a standalone. It was definitely a slow burn. Usually, in cozy mysteries, the crime happens fairly early in the story, but it this one, we have to wait until around 40%! I understand that the author had to introduce a brand new setting and a new set of characters, but it took a while to get there. And a lot of things are very convenient in the story. And if you want to put French in your novel, please make sure to have it proofread by a professional French proofreader. I got this one from NetGalley, so maybe the mistakes will get fixed in the final copy, but there were a lot of very annoying one (at least to me, a professional French proofreader lol). Also, and this is totally a me thing, I was really annoyed by Lucy's attitude and inner/outer monologue about wanting her daughters to be happy, because she seems to thing that the only way they will ever be is for them to get married and have children. But it's a touchy subject for me. So, all in all, the story was interesting, but very different from the other books in the series (and from the usual cozy mystery formula). I listened to the audio book, and the narrator did an amazing job (in general, and with the accents!).
I received an advance review copy for free and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

A well written mystery, highlighted by the great narration.
Captivating plot, & relatable characters.

Thank you to the publishers and Netgalley for the ARC.

"Mother of the Bride Murder" is the 29th "Lucy Stone" book by Leslie Meier. As usual, this book is fairly standalone. I didn't feel I needed to read any of the previous books to have read and understood this one. However, based off previous books I felt this one took quite a bit longer to start getting to the real mystery part of the mystery. I also kept feeling like there was more to this mystery, or could have been, than actually was.

My only complaint is that one of Lucy's daughters always has to mention that she's trying to lose weight or has lost weight, but no one acknowledges why she feels the need to do so. I really wish people would stop making this a character trait without addressing it. Either make it something they have to do for health purposes and why; or address it for the psychological issue that it is and work it out in one of the books.

Great Wedding and French themed cozy mystery though.

Mother of the Bride Murder is the twenty ninth Lucy Stone mystery. When Lucy finds herself in France for her daughters wedding and murder strikes, Lucy takes it upon herself to try to track down the killer so she and her family can go home.

I have read all of the Lucy Stone mysteries and I know what to expect, the fun cozy mystery and reporter who is an amateur sleuth. Something about this book fell short for me though. Maybe it was the surprise wedding that came out of the blue or the fact that we weren’t in Tinkers Cove, I’m not fully sure. I enjoyed Lucy, as always, and her journey to uncover the killer, but there were parts of her attitude this time that bothered me, like the way she dealt with Toby. Another thing that kept confusing me was Lucy’s difficultly at understanding that crime France isn’t handled the same as in American, which is true, but unless I’m completely misremembering, Lucy was already caught up in a murder investigation in Paris so it shouldn’t be that surprising. Anyway, I’ll get back to the point, this book was full of the typical cozy mystery feeling and I enjoyed seeing Lucy and her whole family together again, but there was something in this book that just didn’t connect like the other books did for me. I look forward to seeing what Lucy gets up to next and hope she’s back in Tinkers Cove!
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book!

Thank you netgalley, dreamscape Media publisher and the author for the free ALC in exchange for my my honest review. This is meant for cozy yesteryear fans had no idea it was book number 29 in the series. It was good quick read which I appreciate for cozy mysteries.

I have read the entire series and the last few have not been quite as good as the first few. This one, in particular, will be the last I will read in the series. The investigating was almost non-existent, which is understandable because Lucy can’t really do so much in France (although she has in the past). What bothers me so much is 1) how Lucy has managed to raise such bratty children and 2) why there is so many social justice references (yes, sex trafficking and climate change are huge issues but I read to get away from all of this). This is no longer the happy comfort reads I used to love. I cannot recommend this one.

Mother of the Bride Murder is the 29th book in the Lucy Stone series by Leslie Meier. This is the only book I've read in the series so I'm glad it could easily be read as a standalone. This was a cute cozy mystery that was easy to read in one sitting. I really liked the characters. I'd love to go back and start this series from the beginning to get to know them better. The murder didn't happen until nearly halfway through the book so the first half felt a little too slow for me. I really enjoyed watching the mystery unfold but the ending was rushed and left me a little unsatisfied. I still enjoyed reading this one either way and would love to start this series from the beginning soon.

Thank you to netgalley and the publishers for this audiobook in exchange for an honest review.