Part of the reason I took a break was this book. I liked the 1724 Charlestown setting, but other than that, meh. It's a mystery involving pirates, a bitchy potential stepmother and a pack of lies. It wasn't awful, but it wasn't great either and it just didn't keep my attention long.
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Whistler in the Dark was much better. I made myself slog through Skull Island a couple days ago and then picked this one up. It's set in 1867 in a brand new Colorado town. The main character's mother is a widow who knows how to run a newspaper so she takes herself and her daughter out to Colorado to start the town's paper. Once there, they find that the man who hired the mother painted the town a much prettier picture than it actually is and that at least one person isn't fond of a woman running a paper. As the troubles grow, the main character finds herself with multiple mysteries to solve. It's pretty fast-paced and interesting.
Chilkoot Pass I just finished. It's set during the 1897 Klondike gold rush. It's got interesting characters, which help move the story forward, because they're basically just packhorses the entire story. They just pack their shit and move it and unpack it and eat and sleep, then repeat. Only the adult characters get the joy of moving things repeatedly. It blows my mind that people were that eager for gold that they actually did this crap.
The mystery plot has the main character trying to find a thief in their midst. Money goes missing not once but twice. The first is never solved, but the second one is. But it's not the same person that's taken the rest of their smaller items.
The main wants to be a writer, so I can relate to her there. There's something likeable about her, even though she's not as dynamic as some of the other leads in this series.
The author unfortunately only contributed this one book to the series, as well as a Samantha mystery, which I remember being a pretty good one.
