Deadly Summer by Denise Grover Swank
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Series: Darling Investigations #1
Released January 9, 2018
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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…
I received this book for free from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
Deadly Summer is more of a cozy mystery than it is a romantic to suspense to me but it really was truly entertaining and kept me on the edge of my seat after the 25/30% mark. The beginning was a bit slow for me and I really had to push past it, but once I did it was a great read!
Deadly Summer is a perfect blend of Swank’s Rose Gardner Series and Magnolia Steele. The southern in this book isn’t overplayed or done up too much. Even if the producer tried to make them appear that way.
Summer came back home as a washed up actress and ready to investigate crimes, but soon realized that the cases were fake and there was no reality. Summer and her cousin set out to figure out what was really happening in their home town, when the ‘missing person’ they were investigating was found dead and other people were found murdered.
I was on the edge of my seat trying to figure out who the killer was. I was scared for Summer and I wasn’t sure who, if anyone I could trust.
Not only was Deadly Summer a mystery, but we also have a second chance romance budding between Summer and her ex-boyfriend turned chief of police. He will frustrate you but the tension between these two is perfection.
If you are looking for a romantic suspense that is light on the sex and more of a slow burn cozy mystery then you need to read Deadly Summer!Want more Denise Grover Swank? Check out Center Stage, it’s my favorite DGS series!!
