In the seventh and final book of Bree Baker’s critically acclaimed Seaside Café Mystery series, Pleading the Fish, Everly Swan’s wedding plans are upended by a dead body. She’ll have to run her teashop, find a dress, and catch a murderer all before she can walk down the aisle!

Café owner and amateur sleuth Everly Swan, like every Swan woman before her, is cursed in love. The only problem? Her fiancé Detective Grady Hayes has something to say about it—he doesn’t believe in magic and is determined to prove the curse wrong so they can spend their lives together. Everly wishes it could be so simple!

It feels like a sign when a historian looking into Swan history is found dead in an antique wishing well, and Everly fears the curse is spreading. Grady takes the case, looking to find justice and prove the curse wrong, while Everly does a bit of investigating on her own. Big change is coming for Everly and her friends, but with mysterious strangers lurking about and someone leaving increasingly threatening messages for the happy couple, Everly’s not sure she’ll get her happily-ever-after!

Review:

Lighthearted, quirky, and highly entertaining!

In this latest novel in the Seaside Café Mysteries, Pleading the Fish, we head back to Charm, North Carolina, and into the life of tea shop owner Everly Swan as she once again finds herself unexpectedly tied up in a local murder and dividing her time between baking treats, investigating who killed the local historian and why, and working on overcoming her fears about the infamous Swan curse and finally marrying the man she loves the handsome, patient Detective Grady Hays.

The writing is smooth and sweet. The characters are sharp, supportive, and rash. And the plot is a delightfully whimsical whodunit full of misdirection, amateur sleuthing, suspicious personalities, small-town living, community, romance, and decadent delights.

Overall, Pleading the Fish is another playful, mysterious, charming read by Baker, and even though it’s a little bittersweet to say goodbye to all the characters I’ve come to know and love over the past seven novels, it is nevertheless a superb ending to a fabulous series that I will undoubtedly miss and highly recommend.

This novel is available on March 29, 2022.

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