Last Lessons of Summer by Margaret Maron

Last Lessons of Summer is a book I have had on my shelves for awhile. I believe I bought it either from a library sale or from a thrift store and I decided to read it because I am ready for some summer weather (Today it was struggling to reach 65... I am sooooo ready for the 80s!). From reading the back of this book, I thought it may be a suspense book, but I would classify this more as a cozy mystery with some women's fiction in it. I give it a B-.

Back cover:
Her grandmother was killed in the very same house where her mother committed suicide. Now, in the suffocating heat of a Southern August, Amy Steadman, heir to the merchandising and publishing empire, returns to the old family homestead to clear out her grandmother's things... and perhaps find some answers. Frightened by parallells between her parents' stormy relationship and her own troubled marriage, Amy desperately needs to connect the dots between her life and the dark heritage that shaped her. Yet the more she learns, the closer she comes to a murderous force that may be part of her own family- and one that will not hesitate to lie, decieve, or kill...

There were a ton of characters here that were very difficult to keep track of. The author does provide a family tree in the beginning of the book, but it was such a pain to keep flipping back and forth to see who was related to who and how they were related. I also thought that there may be more of a mystery here, and maybe a bit more danger, but there was very little of that. Ms. Maron does do a fantastic job of describing the deep south in the summer and I admit there were quite a few times I was imagining myself sitting on a big, long porch reading and sipping sweet tea. Were it not for the wonderful and beautiful descriptions, I probably would have rated this book lower as I thought it was just pretty boring. Maybe if I had been expecting more of a cozy, I would have enjoyed the book more but I felt like there was a bit of switch and bait.

I am not sure what I am going to read next, but it will be another one of my own books. I am out of library books, so I will just check something out of my own "library". The Wings play in about 25 minutes are they are currently up 2-0 in the series! As much as I hate to say it, I wouldn't be terribly upset if they lost one of the next two games so they can come home and win the Cup in front of our crowd on Saturday. I hope everyone has been reading wonderful books and Happy Reading!