Review: ROMANCE WITH A TOUCH OF MYSTERY
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 08 31, 2012
This is the second in a series by Bartal which I think is best categorized as a Romantic Mystery. By that title I designate those books which are essentially Romances with a mystery thrown in as a minor theme both to allow the book to straddle two of the most popular themes in fiction among women who comprise the majority  of book-buyers of those genre and to provide an element of suspense beyond Girl loves Boy, Girl Loses Boy,  Girl Gets Boy, the standard plot line of most romances.In this second book of the series, our heroine, now a very wealthy young woman, asks one of her two suitors to accompany her to the wedding of her sister to the man to whom the heroine had been engaged until he broke it off in order to marry the younger woman. Since then,  our heroine has never had confidence in herself as a lover nor a wish once again to put herself in a position of being hurt by a man. When her first choice among the suitors is forced to stay at home for business reasons, she turns to the second suitor, a police officer, who eagerly accepts the chance of a week-end alone (except for most of her family) with his lady.Most of the remainder of the book is devoted to the relationship between the two as they come closer to each other while trying to cope with the antics of her sister's in-laws-to-be.Along the way, a murder is committed and solved by the heroine with the help of her suitor. It is is not much of a murder and not much effort is put into the details by the author.I find this, as I did the first in the series, a lightweight but pleasant reading experience with no dark side to force reflection . The heroine is congenial and both suitors are "right-guys". How long the author can continue without adding more substance to the main characters and  more complexity to the plots, I don't know, but I can commend both this and the earlier work to any regular reader of Cozy Romances with a Spot of Mystery.