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Book Review | Deadly Summer by Denise Grover Swank – Darling Investigations Book 1

Date Published | January 9, 2018

Date Read | June 2021

Goodreads Rating | 3

Overall | Denise Grover Swank is an excellent author but this story just fell flat for me since I am not a fan of reality TV. I find it lame and boring and having the main character in a reality TV show sort of reminded me of that. But if you like reality TV fake drama, you’ll love this – it’s perfect for that audience.

Pros | Denise Swank is a good author so even though I hated the premise of this story, I still found it entertaining.

Cons | Reality TV and her friendship with her cousin seems fake and forced

Warnings | None

POV | First Person POV Past Tense

Will I Be Continuing With The Series | No

Description | Ten years ago, Summer Butler was television’s most popular teenage sleuth. Since then, she’s hit—what gossip sites just love to call—the gutter. Nearly bankrupt, betrayed, estranged from her greedy mother, and just about unemployable, she’s coaxed into that desperate haven for has-beens: reality TV.

Winging it as a faux PI, she’ll solve off-the-cuff mysteries in her hometown of Sweet Briar, Alabama. For added drama, there’s police chief Luke Montgomery, inconveniently Summer’s first and only love.

It’s when Summer stumbles upon a very real corpse that Darling Investigations takes an unexpected twist. The growing list of suspects is a big draw to viewers, but the reality is that Summer doesn’t know whom she can trust. Someone has written this killer new scene especially for her, and unless Summer gives the role everything she’s got, it could be her last…

Seasoned with Murder by Catherine Bruns
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