I bought a paperback copy from Barnes & Noble.
Summary:
By day, Florrie Fox manages Color Me Read bookstore in Georgetown, Washington D.C. By night, she creates her own intricately detailed coloring books for adults, filling the pages with objects that catch her eye. There’s plenty of inspiration in her new apartment–a beautiful carriage house belonging to Professor John Maxwell, Florrie’s boss. He offers the property to Florrie rent-free with one condition–she must move in immediately to prevent his covetous sister and nephew from trying to claim it.
When the professor’s nephew, Delbert, arrives, he proves just as sketchy as Florrie feared. But the following morning, Delbert has vanished. It’s not until she visits the third floor of the store that Florrie makes a tragic discovery–there’s a trap door in the landing, and a dead Delbert inside. The esteemed Professor Maxwell is an obvious suspect, but Florrie is certain this case isn’t so black and white. Doodling clues, she begins to consider other colorful characters on the scene, all with a motive for murder. With a killer drawing closer, Florrie will need to think outside the lines . . . before death makes his mark again.
My Review:
I was looking in the cozy mystery section at my local Barnes & Noble and the book cover was what caught my attention. It’s black and white, yet completely eye-catching because it’s a color yourself cover. It reminded me of the adult coloring books and it piqued my interest.
I was looking for a new mystery series to get into and, when I saw the cover, I decided to give this one a shot. It sounded good and caught my attention right away.
This cozy mystery is similar to most cozies. Florrie is the manager of a bookstore called Color Me Read. She’s an artist who creates adult coloring books. When someone is murdered in the shop, Florrie finds herself in the investigative rabbit hole.
As I said, this one has a similar plot to most cozy mysteries – the innocent, unsuspecting protagonist gets caught up in the murder and ends up spending their time trying to figure it out while being guarded by their love interest detective.
I didn’t mind it though. This plot has been worked and reworked so many times and each one is unique from the rest. I really enjoyed the overall atmosphere of this one.
There are a lot of characters in this one, though it’s not difficult to keep them all straight. There’s a casting list at the beginning of the book which, I’ll admit, I found really useful. I didn’t think I’d need it, but I flipped back to it a couple of times – especially since I had to skip reading for a day. It was a nice refresher.
The characters themselves were fun. They all had their own personalities but they weren’t as unique and different from each other as I felt they could have been. Still, they were interesting and I absolutely loved their names. Florrie especially is a fun name.
This is a quick, easy to read mystery. It’s about 275 pages long and, with the special color me cover, the paperback is quite tall and bigger than most. The print was on the larger scale which was easy on the eyes and it felt like I was reading the book faster than I actually was.
The mystery overall is easy to enough to follow and it was great to get to attempt to solve the mystery alongside Florrie and her family and friends. It’s not confusing and everything at the end is neatly tied up.
This wasn’t a bad book. It’s the first in a series and, I’ll admit, it wasn’t my favorite. I felt the characters could have been more their own and more could have happened with the plot. However, it was a still a good read and I’ll look forward to picking up the next book in the series.
Color Me Murder by Krista Davis gets…
4 out of 5 cups
Favorite Quote:
“Loyalty is a great trait, Florrie, except where murder is involved. The truth always floats to the top.” -Krista Davis, Color Me Murder
Buy the book:
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Abe Books
Have you read this book? What did you think of it? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below and if you enjoyed this post, please share it around!
Patreon | Twitter | Instagram | Pinterest | GoodReads | Double Jump
