This book (part of a series featuring stable hand turned beauty queen/amateur detective) is yet another favorite of mine. The story set in the small town of Aubergine, Virginia has all the charm that you would expect from a small town, along with a heavy helping of family secrets. 

After the death of her mother, Dakota Green receives the 11th letter from her mother, which tells her compete the the annual beauty pageant which is shrouded in the mystery after the disappearance of Miss 2001. When the pageant owner vanishes, all suspicions land on Dakota, Aunt Dee who has been managing the pageant since she won back in the 90's.

If you love a good mystery with a side of romance and family secrets, you're going to want to pre-order your copy as soon as they're available on Amazon. The official release date is February 11th, 2025.

Dakota's plunge into the high-stakes world of beauty pageants, where a previous contestant has gone missing and a fresh theft has taken place, promised to be a thrilling ride as we untangled a web of secrets. The setting itself - the pageant, the sets, the premise - was interesting and full of potential, with moments of humour and charm that lightened the narrative in places.
The novel has some good scenes that stand out for their wit or for being quite clever, and readers looking for a lighter mystery may find this an enjoyable read. For me, the tension didn't quite build enough, and I was left looking for a little more mystery and suspense. Although there was one twist that did catch me off guard, many of the reveals felt too obvious ahead of time, taking away that suspense. Key clues were presented in a way that made outcomes feel a little too predictable.
While it didn't quite hit the mark for me, I can see how the blend of humour and glamour could be appealing for others, and I hope they find joy in reading it.

#ABeautyQueensGuidetoMurderandMayhem #NetGalley is a really good book that I had the pleasure to read and review.
Dakota needs money, and competing in a beauty pageant is one way to make money, unfortunately, things don't always go as planned.
I liked all the characters and I'm looking forward to reading more in this series.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for selecting me to read an advanced copy of this book.

This was fun but not that attention-grabbing for me.

This is another example of a book with such an amazingly fun concept that just wasn't executed to perfection the way I wish it was. I think the issue here was the writing style and how that revealed information/allowed the story to play out. I find that the writing style that is used for a mystery/thriller book really does impact how I feel about it A LOT. That can really make or break a book for me, you need to be releasing information the right way for the suspense and satisfaction to hit properly.

I couldn't get myself to be invested in these character (or what was happening to them), they just weren't interesting enough or dramatic enough for me.

And this was rather slow-paced for what it was. This would be such a perfect book to make fast-paced and suspenseful.

This book is also not on Goodreads (at the time that I was reading it/writing this review), so I will continue to check back for it, but this is the review I would've posted there.

Thanks to NetGalley for the e-ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review! My TikTok (Zoe_Lipman) review will be up at the end of the month with my monthly reading wrap-up.

So this was a slow burn for me. I wasn’t fully invested in it until about halfway through, but then I was fully in. I loved the idea of this beauty queen pageant with a murder mystery thrown in. It was nice to see Dakota regain her footing in life. The reveals were fun and unexpected for me. The only thing that was missing for me was more closure or development between Dakota and the sheriff.