Customer Reviews

Bitter Sweets (A Savannah Reid Mystery)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

She is dripping with southern sass. The characters jump off of the page right into GA or MS or LA. I've read all four of the Savannah reid novels and hunger for more. She has a fabulous range of communication between the dour yet male-hiding-his-feelings Det. Coulter as well as the "perky" asst.in Tammy Hart. Throw is some Ben and Jerrys ice cream w/ a dash of magnolia scented bubble bath and I feel as though I am back home in the south. I love the way that she has not forced her main character, detective Savannah Reid, to sleep with every male couterpart she meets and I feel proud to be female. Throw in her friendship with other male characters, some ice cream, lit candles and tales of her upbringing with Granny Reid and she is a true strong female character for which I find myself cheering!!!! I impatiently await her next novel.

While I was up half the night with what seems to be the flu, I was pretty much able to start and finish Bitter Sweets by G. A. McKevett. This is the second book in the series, and you end up getting a fair amount of character development devoted to Savannah's grandmother. She shows up on Savannah's doorstep, wanting to experience a trip to Disneyland. Unfortunately, Savannah has a few other things going on.

Savannah's new detective agency gets its first case, and it's a request to track down a missing sister. They take all the necessary precautions to make sure the person requesting the trace is actually her brother, and they start the hunt. When they finally find her, they learn she's in hiding from her ex-husband who has threatened to kill her and their daughter. Before Savannah can arrange a meeting between brother and sister, she finds out she's been duped. The sister is murdered, the child is kidnapped, and Savannah now has to track down the killer. To make it worse, the chief of police is seriously considering charging her with being an accessory to the murder.

A nice number of twists and turns, and some ethical questions at the end where you have to figure out whether justice would be served by doing the "right" thing.

I love all of these Savannah Reid mysteries. They are great reads.
Unlike some of the female plot driven mysteries now popular the plot isnt so easy to figure out. There is always a little something you didnt expect.
The characters are fun and warm, making you feel like you know them.
There is always a sub plot that is just as engaging as the mystery.
I highly recommend them all to any mystery fan.

I absolutely love the Savannah Reid mystery series. She is my kind of gal...sassy, a bit "fluffy", a Southern belle, and sweet as pie! This book is the darkest of the series...but a great read. Read them all. You'll be glad you did!

It starts off with a page-turning premise. Savannah is hired by a client to find his long-lost sister. She begins to help then finds that the sister is being stalked by an abusive murderous ex-husband and that he may be the supposed "brother." The woman is murdered and everything points to the ex-husband, whom Savannah may have helped, but then he is murdered in the same way.
Later on the plot crumbles and the mystery is resolved by introducing confessions and new witnesses (although I suppose that is what mostly happens when real murders are solved).
Savannah is a great character with a complex and ambiguous set of relationships. She is unmarried, past 40 and overweight. She is estranged from her mother and father and had to raise her siblings with the help of her grandmother. Her closest male friends are Dirk, whom she finds sexually repugnant and a gay male couple whom she finds sexually attractive. She is closely involved with her pretty female assistant.
There are patches of inspirational sickly sloppy sentimental stuff but they can be skipped or you might even like them. This is second in the series. Rather darker and better plotted (which is not saying much because McKevett is not a great plotter, at least as far as the main mystery is concerned) than the others.

I love Savannah, and would love to have her as a friend. This series is very intelligent, as well, and I found this book to be even better and more interesting than the first in the series. I really enjoyed this book, and wanted to keep reading it even when I had to put it down. I looked forward to a lengthy reading time at night, so I could spend more time with Savannah and her crew. Excellent title for this as well!

The second book in the series is just as good as the first. I sincerely recommend this book.

I'm not sure if my disappointment is in the quality of the book, or in the fact that I was misled by the cheery cover & title.

British mysteries are quite a different genre from American hard-boiled detective stories: they are cosy and comforting, almost a "Tea and Murder" party. Yes, there has been a murder: but brutual details are not stressed, so as not to disturb the reader's equanimity. Instead, we are given a delicious smorgasbord: piquant characters, a peek into a society or life-style very different from our own, a tantalizing puzzle to solve through logic and the famous "little grey cells". Although McKevett is an American author, the cover, the title, and the blurb on the back cover led me to believe that "Bitter Sweets" belong to this genre.

We are indeed offered piquant characters, although no character development. But the violence of the murder jolted me out of the cosy Tea and Murder mode. Even more distressing was the lack of a puzzle ... the murderer was easily identifiable. Why read a mystery when there is no mystery?

Fresh as spring sunshine. When Savannah offers to help a brother find his long-lost sister, she is lead down a twisting, turning path that leaves her and the reader surprised. I defy the most ardent amateur sleuth to figure this one out before the end of the book. Humorous dialogue helps alleviate some of the book's more grim aspects.

This book, as with the previous book in this series, Just Desserts, has interesting characters, great descriptions, and good pacing. However, this book was ruined by an improbable plot twist...Without this plot lapse, the book would have been entertaining.