Bone Appetit by Carolyn Haines


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This is the tenth book in the Sarah Booth Delaney series.  It is only the second one I’ve read.  This book starts with the after effects of the last case weighing heavily on Sarah Booth and her partner, Tinkie.  She is trying to recover after a miscarriage and Tinkie decides to treat her to a luxurious vacation at a beautiful hotel and cooking school.  The hotel also happens to be the site of the Miss Viking beauty pageant.  The pageant is soon in a state of chaos after the deaths of two of the contestants and the illness of a third.  Sarah Booth and Tinkie are hired by the main suspect in these murders, another contestant named Hedy Lamarr Blackledge, to clear her name.

I really enjoy this series and the characters.  The setting of the Deep South is like another character in the books, too.  I had read an earlier book in the series last year and the way the series has progressed surprised me.  Now it seems like Sarah Booth has a movie career which is somewhat unexpected because earlier in the series she has returned to Dahlia House, her ancestral home, as a failed actress.  It seems like a big leap to go from failure to movie star.

Haines really expressed Sarah Booth’s heartache over her miscarriage very well.  Her feelings of loss and the way they would bubble up at certain moments really rang true.  The way this affected her relationship with her fiancé, Graf, was also realistic and heartbreaking.  Her friendship with Tinkie is another highlight of the series and I love the way they handle confrontations together.  I have to look for the rest of the series to fill in the gaps.

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