Author: Paula Lester and Lisa B. Thomas
Publisher: Paula Lester and Lisa B. Thomas
Series: Beachside Books Magical Cozy Mystery
Genre: Paranormal Romance, Cozy Mystery
Rating: 3 Stars
Medium: Audio Book

Paige is living her best life sipping wine and working on her romance novel in one of the most romantic countries in the world, Italy. But all of that changes when she gets a call and has to fly home to Texas for her beloved Aunt who falls ill.

Quicker than she’d like, her Aunt passes and she finds herself with her Aunt’s failing bookstore, cousins who aren’t happy inheriting their aunt’s house, and a mysterious message from her Aunt that hints at buried treasure somewhere on the house’s property. Before Pagie can consider returning to Italy, she has to untangle the mystery and find the treasure. But will she even survive to return to Italy?

Potential spoilers beyond this point

Overall this book started off interesting. Paige has moved to Italy because she thinks she’ll have a better chance at writing her book about love in a romantic country with a beautiful view. But it’s not exactly the life she’d thought it was, because the reality is she’s working a small job to pay rent on a house she’s sharing with others, and her novel is kind of stagnant on the page due to writer’s block.

While she grumbles about having to return to Texas for her Aunt, the move gives her life a new chapter as it were. She not only inherits her Aunt’s failing bookstore, but she discovers that there’s the ghost of an old pirate captain that’s tied to one of the books in the shop, and his long buried treasure was found by her Aunt and then hidden carefully away in the house.

Which means it’s a race against time to try and find the treasure because her cousins are selling the house because they don’t want it, and inherited it so it’s theirs to do with as they will. Naturally, others have heard of the buried treasure as well and are looking to buy it for the same reason.

By cleaning up and trying to get the bookstore on its feet again, Paige gets to learn and connect with her late Aunt in a way she hadn’t understood she could before, learns about herself, and finds a potential future if she wants to grab it with both hands.

It’s definitely a cute start to a series and it caught my interest enough to want to continue to the next book.