I love that I can see myself in the main character being hearing impaired as well. Brings something unique to the genre. A great combination of design, show home, ancestors, ghosts and mystery, definitely keeps you guess until the end.

Meg Barrett is following her dream of being a decorator with her beachside Cottage By The Sea business. She’s ‘owned’ by a fat Maine Coon cat named Jo! Meg’s best friend, Elle Warner, shares her enthusiasm for vintage finds and is engaged to Detective Arthur Shoner. Meg and Elle often work together, as they are now working on the first annual Montauk Designer Showcase house—Enderly Hall. The author develops the plot well, and I thought the characterizations of the cast gave very good impressions of their true natures.

The fascinating murder mystery involves a lighthouse ghost, ancestors, Captain Kidd, and Ghostbusters! The mysterious Patrick Seaton; a famous author, and Meg’s neighbor on down the beach, seems open to a better friendship with Meg which thrills me because I like him! I enjoyed all aspects of this cozy mystery and hope there are more stories in the future.

I honestly reviewed a digital arc provided by NetGalley and Beyond the Page Publishing. Thank you.

5th in this cozy series, Design To Die For, is an great addition. Set in the Hampton's, Meg is an interior designer helping to out a designer showcase together in her friends estate. Fun characters, a fast easy mystery.

I received this ARC via Netgalley and Beyond the Page Publishing, in return for an honest review. This is the fifth book in a series but is easily read as a stand-alone. Meg Barrett owns a local interior design shop in Montauck, in the Hamptons. Meg’s a unique lead character in cozy literature as she is hearing impaired and uses both hearing aids and lip reading to understand people around her. Those around her include two of her best friends, Elle and Jenna. Both Elle and Jenna are very, very wealthy and also live on Montauck. Meg’s single, Elle is engaged, and Jenna is recently married to Roland, a man that’s turned into a horrible bully to Jenna and everyone around her. This is obvious when Jenna offers her historic family home, recently renovated, as the Designer Showhouse for a group of interior designers to showcase their skills and raise funds for charity. Roland decides to direct all the work and basically angers everyone involved, including his wife. When he’s discovered dead on the night of the opening cocktail party, Meg and Jenna become prime suspects in his murder. Anxious to clear their names, Meg channels all her skills to find out which of the other designers or townspeople would do such a horrible crime.
This is a solid cozy mystery. There are interesting tie-ins to historic homes in the area and their histories, as a sub-theme is whether Jenna’s home was designed by Stanford White. The characters are well-written and the plot moves well. I struggled a bit with Meg’s continued fixations on her former (cheating) fiancée as it appeared, she’d successfully transitioned from her former life and had good friends but that may be a carry-over plot from the previous books.