Another cozy, coastal mystery
This is the third book in Elizabeth Hunter’s entertaining Moonstone Cove trilogy about three very different women who have become friends after they discovered their paranormal talents after a shared traumatic event.
Fate Interrupted features Megan “Atlanta” Carpenter, who not only uprooted her life and the lives of her three teenaged children, but also left her thriving event-planning business behind, in order to follow her husband to the sleepy Central Coast town of Moonstone Cove, only to find the bastard cheating on her. With the support of her friends Katherine and Toni behind her, she finally got up the nerve to kick him out of their pretentious house and out of her life. Sadly, she doesn’t really miss him that much, but mostly only regrets that she wasted so much energy and so many years trying to make things work between them, but she is definitively finished with all that. So now she is in the process of rebuilding her event-planning business, starting out with planning and organizing events for the Dusi winery. And it doesn’t hurt that the owner of the winery, Nico Dusi (Toni’s cousin) is great to look at, a decent guy and single, which gives her libido all kinds of ideas, but they work together and they both have teenaged children living with them, so mostly they just enjoy their banter.
Things seem to be looking up for Megan, when out of the blue some experimental vine grafts get stolen from Nico’s greenhouse. He and Henry were working on developing an old French variety that could have catapulted the Dusi winery to the next level, if their plans were successful. Although the local police take the theft seriously, there isn’t much they can do as the perpetrators left no clues. The mystery is further compounded as Nico and Henry kept the project under wraps and really only a handful of people new about it. So Megan and her friends Katherine and Toni decide to do some sleuthing on their own, seeing as their attempts were quite successful in the past, even though Toni is a bit hampered by the fact that she is about ready to pop her baby…
I really liked the second-chance romance between Megan and Nico who both appeared to be great people that had just chosen their partner rashly when they were very young but now tried to be good parents for their children. They weren’t really looking for a new partner, but found each other anyway.
I also feel that Elizabeth Hunter is getting better at the mystery aspect of her stories and I like how the three friends mostly solve their self-chosen cases relying on old-fashioned investigative work by unobtrusively questioning people, carefully examining their backgrounds, establishing motive and whereabouts and some unauthorized snooping, although their powers come in handy at times.
A thoroughly enjoyable and entertaining cozy mystery with a paranormal twist, coupled with a sweet and sexy second-chance romance.