The Sullivan's Island Supper Club: A Carolina Tale by Susan M. Boyer Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, large print, ebook, audiobook
Genres: cozy mystery, relationship fiction, Southern fiction, women's fiction
Series: Carolina Tales #2
Pages: 374
on September 17, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads
From the bestselling author of the award-winning novel Big Trouble on Sullivan's Island comes a captivating new tale of friendship, family, and community, and the fissures that threaten to shatter even our closest bonds.
Welcome to Sullivan’s Island, an idyllic beachside town just outside Charleston, South Carolina. This serene, unspoiled sanctuary offers tourists a picturesque taste of the lush Lowcountry while the locals enjoy a laid-back, small-town lifestyle. Amidst an eclectic mix of newcomers and natives, lifelong resident and social maven Tallulah Wentworth’s legendary monthly dinners have united an unlikely group of women into the very best of friends.
To outsiders, this sunny, seaside haven is nothing short of paradise, but the residents of this beachside hamlet know that it harbors its share of troubles. Everyone has an opinion about the most hotly contested local issue—how to manage the maritime forest that’s sprung up on accreted land—and civility is quickly running out at both town council meetings and in online forums.
When a neighborhood meet-and-greet devolves into violence, several pillars of the community are led away in handcuffs. By the next morning, a very real, very dead body is the newest addition to Sarabeth Boone’s spooky Halloween graveyard display. But who could possibly be responsible for such a heinous act?
Did someone finally snap over the mounting tension between conservationists and cutters? Or was this a premeditated act perpetrated by an opportunistic killer masquerading as a trustworthy friend and neighbor?
The Sullivan’s Island Supper Club weaves a tale of mystery, friendship, and love—new love, old love, and second-chance love. Discover the lengths these women will go to protect each other and uncover the truth, even when it shatters the delicate balance of their seemingly perfect lives.
With her uniquely Southern voice, Susan M. Boyer delivers a fast-paced follow-up to the reader-favorite Big Trouble on Sullivan's Island. Perfect for fans of strong Southern women, twisting tales, and the breathtaking Carolina coast, this charming whodunnit mystery marries scandal and sisterhood for the ultimate reading treat.
Be sure to make your reservation at The Sullivan’s Island Supper Club today!
My Review:
In the first book in this very cozy mystery series, Big Trouble on Sullivan’s Island, we met P.I. Hadley Cooper and the group of sisters-from-other-misters from multiple generations who form the core group of Hadley’s friends on Sullivan’s Island – led by the grand doyenne of the group’s beachfront Happy Hour, Eugenia Ladson.
Together, they solved a big mystery and prevented an even bigger miscarriage of justice, even as Eugenia succumbed to the cancer that had done its damndest to blight the final years of her life – but did not succeed even though it took her life.
The Sullivan’s Island Supper Club, one of Eugenia’s many brilliant ideas to “fix” one of her friends – something she was extremely good at – was designed to give her lifelong best friend Tallulah Wentworth something to focus on after the death of her beloved husband, Henry.
The ‘supper club’ isn’t really a supper club in the old tradition. Rather, it’s a monthly dinner, often bartended and occasionally even catered, organized and arranged by Tallulah at her big, built-for-entertaining, Sullivan’s Island home.
It’s a grand idea that worked for Tallulah, and has provided all of the women involved – as well as the men in their lives – with a chance to get together, enjoy each other’s company, catch up with each other – and just generally keep the sisterhood that Eugenia started going strong.
Howsomever, just as the first book in the Carolina Tales series was titled Big Trouble on Sullivan’s Island, this second book could easily have been called “Big Trouble at the Sullivan’s Island Supper Club” – because that’s exactly what it’s about, and not just because there’s more big trouble on Sullivan’s Island itself.
Although there certainly is, as an island-wide civil war is brewing over the accreted land that has been deposited on all the sides of the island that face away from Charleston as a result of work done to maintain the Charleston harbor. A maritime forest has grown up on that “new” land – all of which belongs to the town and not to any of the property owners who bought ocean-front views they no longer have – but it seems are still being taxed for. Many of those owners want the forest clear-cut in spite of the protection it provides from soil erosion. Other owners want to eliminate the rats, snakes and other small burrowing wildlife that thrive in the forests and more than occasionally invade their homes.
And there are conservationists who want the maritime forests preserved, as well as many residents who believe the protection from soil erosion is worth the occasional rat sighting. (You may shudder but still agree – as this reader certainly did).
The island’s general troubles, pitting neighbor against neighbor and bringing former friends to outright blows, is just the terrible icing on the really awful cake of personal troubles that nearly every member of the supper club is experiencing during the months leading up to the big blowup and blowout between the cutters and conservers that takes place on one supper club member’s lawn, leading to the morning discovery of a dead body out front even as another friend is in grave danger – of being placed in one.
Escape Rating B-: I picked this up because I’ve really enjoyed the author’s Liz Talbot mystery series (starting with Lowcountry Boil) and had a good reading time with the first book in her Carolina Tales, Big Trouble on Sullivan’s Island. So I was expecting more of the same, meaning a cozy mystery with a good cast of characters set in a quirky small town with plenty of Southern charm.
Which was almost, but not quite, what I got. I came here looking for the mystery to be the backbone of the story, and that’s not what happens in The Sullivan’s Island Supper Club. There were plenty of little mysteries, definitely plural, but the big mystery, the dead body on the front lawn, wasn’t any bigger of a mystery – except for the corpse, of course – than any of the other many tangled mystery threads on the way to it.
This is a story of sisterhood – and about each of the sisters individually. Often with women’s/relationship fiction, I describe them as stories about friendship in which ‘a romance occurs’ but is not the focus. The Sullivan’s Island Supper Club is a story about friendship in which ‘a romance does occur’ AND ‘a mystery occurs’.
Which was not the emphasis I was looking for. Your reading mileage may vary.
The story this time around is told in first-person, as this author’s stories often are, but in this case it was multiple first persons. For each month – and each supper club meeting – in the months preceding the ‘main event’, we get a chapter from each of the core members of the group, from their individual points of view, focusing on the individual crises in their lives that includes a personal mystery in each case. I found some of their personal trials and tribulations more involving than others – and I expect that will be true for most readers, albeit mixed somewhat differently based on the reader.
As the story went on, it also felt like there was just ‘one too many cooks’ making this particular meal, but they all do tie mostly neatly together at the end. Leaving this reader, at the end, not as sure and/or happy about the thing as I expected. I think that this was the right book at the wrong time for me and probably means I just need to find a more straightforward ‘whodunnit’ this weekend.
Howsomever, the Carolina Tales continue next year in Trouble’s Turn to Lose, with P.I. Hadley Cooper featured again as the protagonist, AND there’s a short story about the beginnings of the Sullivan’s Island Supper Club, titled, appropriately, Beginnings, that’s available now. The next time I’m looking for something a little more relationship fiction-y I’m planning to go back and see how it all began.
