In A Sticky Inheritance by Emily James, Nicole Fitzhenry-Dawes, a low- level lawyer, who is the daughter of a pair of high power lawyers, travels from Northern Virginia to Fair Haven, Michigan to deal with the death of her beloved Uncle Stanley (Stan) Dawes. Unhappy with the official cause of death, Nikky challenges Mark, the medical examiner, and Police Chief Carl Wilson to look further into the death, which they soon change from accident or suicide to suspicious.
Then, Nikky finds out that, aware of her dissatisfaction with being a lawyer, Uncle Stan has left Sugarwood, the maple syrup farm that provides jobs and supplies for most of the town, to her in the hopes that she will take over the enterprise. Deciding to move to Michigan to take over the farm, Nicole begins poking into the case, narrowing down the suspects to Russ, the manager of Sugarwood who had a falling out with Stan a month earlier, and Jason, the owner of Beaver’s Tail Brewery. However, Nicole’s snooping leads to someone’s attempting to take her life twice.
I enjoyed listening to this fun book. The plot moves smoothly and with some interesting angles. It does not have as much complexity as the best cozy mysteries, but I still enjoyed the book. I would prefer to have been given more possibilities to guess from as to the identity of the killer.
The characters in this book are fun, but mostly not very round. We get hints as to the back story of Nicole, that she is hurting from a past relationship, and we see her disillusion with work as a lawyer. We get glimpses into the lives of other characters, but most don’t reveal a whole lot about themselves.
Andrea Emmes performs the audio edition of A Sticky Inheritance, in an expressive and clear manner. She has such a sweet-sounding voice that makes the book a delight to listen to. Her performance gives the book more pleasure than merely reading visually would give it.
I had an enjoyable time listening to A Sticky Inheritance. The characters and the plot were fun, though I would have liked more depth to both. But it’s a good start to a series. I give the book four stars.
Disclosure: I received this book from the narrator, but that had no impact on the content of my review.
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