Thursday 21 September 2023

Dead Spread: A House of Cards Mystery by Bethany Browning

From the author of Sasquatch, Baby!, this cozy mystery is a twisty page-turner filled with tarot tips, raven shenanigans, strangers to lovers and MURDER.

When tarot card reader Carrie Dettwiler stumbles across the mayor’s dead body on a random Tuesday, town gossip reaches a fever pitch—and everyone’s convinced she and her rescue raven Waggery have performed a deadly dark ritual. Carrie deals with the cards she’s dealt, turning over every clue, only to be blown off course by her gale-force feelings for tattoo artist Stormy Portwood, who breezes into town at the same time people start dying. Determined to divine the criminal who’s terrorizing the citizens of Prosperity, Carrie must rely on her dangerous knowledge of the town’s secret history to reveal the killer.  (Summary via Goodreads)


Dead Spread by Bethany Browning is the first book in her House of Cards Mystery series and it is like no other book I have ever read...and I have read a lot of books !!

In Dead Spread readers are introduced to a very nice, quaint town called Prosperity where Carrie Dettwiler is taking after her Aunt Inez and running the tarot card reading business out of the cottage her aunt left her.  Sadly the tarot card reading business isn't making enough money to keep the debt collectors off her back but she is doing the best that she can.

Unfortunately after doing a reader for one of her regular clients, things turn dark with the mayor, Carrie's friend, turning up dead in his office and it looks like he is holding one of the cards from Carrie's deck.....and Carrie is the one to find him.  Everyone in town believes that Carrie is the one that killed him so she decides to look into his death to clear her name.  However, she ends up going down a dark tunnel, like the ones under the town of Prosperity that have been there since Prohibition.

While Carrie is looking into Mayor Preston Brix's death, she meets Stormy Portwood who is full of secrets which Carrie wants to know all of them and would like nothing more that to put the mayor's murder behind them so that they can get to know each other better.  But when Carrie's uncle is attacked, the team up to solve the murder and the attack.  

Readers will fall in love with Dead Spread and really enjoy the uniqueness of the story.  Readers will love the town of Prosperity and it's history as well as all of the characters ... and Carrie's pet is a talking Raven ... how more different can one get ?  I highly recommend grabbing your copy and heading to your comfy reading spot with a beverage and a snack.  And the way that Browning ends the story ensures that you will be keeping an eye out for the second book in this series.




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