Book Review: The Last Carolina Summer by Karen White

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The Last Carolina Summer by Karen White is the story about Phoebe Manigault returning home to Mt. Pleasant, a suburb of Charleston, South Carolina, to help her sister with their ailing mother. When past memories resurface, Phoebe is thrown back into some childhood turmoil. I requested an Advanced Readers Copy ARC of The Last Carolina Summer from NetGalley, and I was ecstatic when the provided me with a copy for free in exchange for my honest review. So, a big thank you goes out to them! When I began reading this story, I just happened to be vacationing in Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina. I loved hearing about the different places, including streets and a bridge called the Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge, which I had to cross to get into Mt. Pleasant as well as Isle of Palms. It's always nice to be able to visualize the places and author writes about. With that being said, I'm not a fan of traveling over bridges, and one of the scenes of The Last Carolina Summer mentions a car going off ...
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Book Review: Death by Food Truck: 4 Cozy Culinary Mysteries by Joi Copeland, Cynthia Hickey, Linda Baten Johnson, and Teresa Ives Lilly

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Death by Food Truck: 4 Cozy Culinary Mysteries by Joi Copeland, Cynthia Hickey, Linda Baten Johnson, and Teresa Ives Lilly is a collection of four novellas that are loosely related to each other.  There are a rash of deaths at the Birch Point Lake Park linked to four different food trucks.  This book collection was published on July 1, 2023.

I'd like to thank NetGalley and Barbour Publishing for approving my request to read Death by Food Truck: 4 Cozy Culinary Mysteries by Joi Copeland, Cynthia Hickey, Linda Baten Johnson, and Teresa Ives Lilly.  I received a copy of this book for free in exchange for my honest review.  When I requested to read this book, I didn't realize that the stories had religion in them.  Had I known this, I wouldn't have requested it.

Overall, I would have enjoyed the stories much more had they not been religious, especially the first novella.  I felt like the first author was cramming religion down my throat.  The other three novellas were a little less religious.  There's nothing wrong with Christian books, but they're just not for me.  

The culprit in all four stories were very obvious to me from the beginning despite the authors trying to throw suspicion elsewhere.  Each novella also had a strong romantic element to it, which didn't bother me in the least bit.  The reason I chose to read these stories were because of the food themes, which I did end up enjoying immensely.

Three out of five stars is what I rated Death by Food Truck: 4 Cozy Culinary Mysteries by Joi Copeland, Cynthia Hickey, Linda Baten Johnson, and Teresa Ives Lilly.  If you like Christian Fiction, then you'd likely enjoy these stories, but as I said before, they weren't really for me because of the religious elements.

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