This was good. I have had this book on my tbr for years but for one reason or another, I just never got around to it until now. It took me a minute to really get into the book but once I did, I couldn’t wait to find out what really happened. This book was jam-packed with mysteries and every one of them captured my attention completely.

In this book, you start out not knowing a whole lot about what is going on with any of the characters. With each piece of information presented, I quickly realized just how much I had to learn. Jude needs to get away from everything and ends up in a quaint little bookshop run by Lowell that needs some work and Jude is just the person for the job. I liked all of the characters in this book and couldn’t wait to learn their story. In this small little town, everyone seems to know everybody but everyone also seems to be keeping a lot of secrets. The book took a lot of twists and turns, some I guessed, while others came as a complete shock.

I would definitely recommend this book to others. I thought that it was a well-done mystery with a quirky and likable cast of characters. I would not hesitate to read more of Catriona McPherson’s work in the future.

I received a digital review copy of this book from Midnight Ink.

Ooooooh. What should be one of the best, dark reads on my shelf turns out to be one of the dullest.

Jude needs a safe haven. She remembers finding some dusty old treasures in the oldest bookstore in a town full of old bookstores; Lowland Glen Books. This seems as good a place as any in a pinch. It so happens that Lowell, the bookshop's somewhat scramble-brained owner, needs an assistant and also knows of an affordable rental. So what that the rental is the grave-digger's cottage? It just means Jude will have quiet neighbors.

But the books in the shop, as well as the people in the graveyard, have stories to tell.

Seriously ... what a great premise! A dusty, old bookshop in a remote Scottish village. Throw in a neighboring graveyard, and you've got the makings of one heck of a great dark thriller. So where did this go wrong?

Let's start with the story. First off, it's not a thriller. It's not a horror story. It's a cozy mystery. A cozy mystery. Meaning nothing bad is going to happen on the page. That gorgeous dark cover ... ? Totally misleading. But assuming we like 'cozies' (we don't, typically) even a cozy mystery has a mystery that is integral to the story-telling. And while there are mysteries here (more than one), they aren't satisfactorily addressed. Jude tries to solve the mystery of Lowell, but the biggest mystery hits the reader at the beginning - why does Jude have to get out of town so fast? - and is barely addressed until quite late in the book.

So if the story isn't building and piquing the reader's interest, what are we doing for 300+ pages? We're developing characters, of course. I mean, a great character can carry a book through a weak plot if we are interested in the person. But here, too, we're out of luck. These characters are completely flat. Instead of boosting a story with energy and letting the reader get comfortable with either a familiar or loveable character, we're given two main characters who talk a lot at each other but don't ever seem truly interesting or interested in the other.

And finally, the writing itself. The author's writing style here is more chaotic than the character of Lowell (who feels like he should be chaotic). Sometimes I just couldn't follow a sentence. Sometimes I didn't understand what was going on. The writing style definitely didn't help the dull characters or the slow-developing plot.

Two stars seems a little high, given how much I didn't care for this, but I still think the premise is outstanding and worth a star just for that, and I also learned something ... something interesting enough to write down and research later. That's worth half a star, which rounds up to make this two stars.

Looking for a good book? Don't be fooled by the cover art or the hyperbole from a marketing copywriter, Quiet Neighbors by Catriona McPherson is a slow, dull, cozy mystery.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Book source ~ NetGalley

Jude runs away from London when something bad happens. She was going to fly somewhere far away, but when she gets to the train station on her way out of town, she remembers this old whacky bookshop she visited in this tiny out of the way town and decides to run there instead. What she finds is more than she bargained for and she has to figure out this dinky town’s secrets as well as solve another mystery about her employer, all while staying off the grid and away from the authorities.

There are three mysteries going on in this story and they are all fascinating. Unfortunately, they are the only thing that kept me going. I had to know the answers. If this is the writing style of this author then I will not be reading any more. I hate the style. It’s slapdash and sloppy. There are a million “oh dears” and “my, my my” and other such exclamations. The conversations are really hard to follow with all the local slang and such. Quite tedious and supremely irritating. The writing style does not make it any easier. I only give this a rating of two for the mysteries which are eventually spelled out in a somewhat coherent way. Otherwise, blerg.

This book is deceptive. The cover and the blurb, for me, suggested a horror novel. One with some creepy ghost that makes its presence felt in strange ways. There were little parts where I had genuine creeps and as it progressed I realised that while it wasn’t scary it had suckered me in with a great hook and I just then had to know how it finished.

At one point I started to wonder if the plot was going to unravel because there were so many of them. This never eventuated. I found the whole story to be pretty convincing and while I had suspicions about all the characters, I could never quite pin down where McPherson was going to of next.

McPherson is an author I will be going back to and I’m excited to see what other stories she has for us.

While I liked the author's style, I found the characters and dialogue somewhat unrealistic and a lot of the plot points kind of came out of nowhere. It's a fun read but maybe could have been a bit deeper and more thoughtful to draw in the reader.