TAGGED FOR DEATH (SARAH WINSTON GARAGE SALE MYSTERY, BOOK #1) BY SHERRY HARRIS: BOOK REVIEW

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3 Star rating
 
Tagged for Death
A Sarah Winston Garage Sale Mystery #1
By Sherry Harris
ISBN# 9781617730177
Author’s Website: http://sherryharrisauthor.com

Brought to you by OBS reviewer Andra

tagged-for-death-sherry-harrisSynopsis:

Starting your life over at age thirty-eight isn’t easy, but that’s what Sarah Winston finds herself facing when her husband CJ runs off with a 19-year-old temptress named Tiffany. Sarah’s self-prescribed therapy happily involves hitting all the garage and tag sales in and around her small town of Ellington, Massachusetts. If only she could turn her love for bargain hunting into a full-time career.

One man’s junk is another man’s treasure

But after returning from a particularly successful day searching for yard sale treasures, Sarah finds a grisly surprise in one of her bags: a freshly bloodied shirt…that undoubtedly belongs to her ex, CJ, who now happens to be Ellington’s chief of police. If that’s not bad enough, it seems Tiffany has gone missing. Now it’s up to Sarah to prove that her cold-hearted ex is not a cold-blooded killer…

But finding that treasure can be murder. 

Review:

A thoroughly delightful cozy mystery read.  In the beginning it was difficult for me to get into the story, as it seemed a bit disjointed, but I would say about one-third of the way through the characters and story came together and I could not put the book down…much to my surprise and delight.  My rating of a 3 is due only as a result of the slightly slower “grab me” factor in the beginning of the story. The book kept me captivated from about the 1/3 marker forward.

I enjoyed some of the surprising twists that the reader learns about in the last couple of chapters….and I suspect you will too!  What I thought was interesting was the way the author depicted the “military” community and how tight knit it is and then coupled with a small town comradery in the local town that Sarah now lives in.  Sarah is having a rough go of trying to find her niche in life without the moniker of military wife (as if divorcing is not bad enough).  The discovery that Sarah’s passion for garage sales could turn into a profitable venture for her was genius, gotta love Sarah’s friend for pushing her on that front.  And couldn’t we all use a person to organize our own personal garage sales and make them as profitable as can be along with the purging of unwanted stuff!

I rather enjoyed how this ex-military, ex-wife tried to find out the truth to save her ex-husband.  It depicted how a bond is still there after 20ish years of marriage, even with deception and deceit.  One cannot just turn off the feelings like that.  And then in the end to find out….oops…can’t tell you…you will have to read the book yourself (but it has to do with the betrayal).

I must say, that right up until the end I had not figured out the mystery…which is certainly how I like my cozy mysteries.  I enjoyed Tagged for Death.  As this is the first book of a new cozy series for this author, I will look forward to reading the subsequent books as they become available.

*OBS would like to thank the publisher for supplying a free copy of this title in exchange for an honest review*