I'll Sleep When I've Read ... Debbie Young's Sophie Sayers Villiage Mysteries (1 & 2)

It was a good weekend for some light-hearted mystery and I figured that Debbie Young's Sophie Sayers Village Mystery series would certainly fit what I was looking for. I started reading them since I've got her Dastardly Deeds at St Bride's waiting for me on NetGalley and I had read that there's at least a minor overlap between the two series. There are seven Sophie books so I might not get them all read before Dastardly Deeds, but I'll at least be able to recognize people even if I only go in having read the first two (though I'm almost positive they will all be read at some point).

Sophie Sayers is twenty-five and has been bouncing around Europe teaching English as a Second Language while her boyfriend, Damian, trots around with his traveling theater company. She leaves him to go move into the cottage she inherited from her great-aunt in the cozy little village of Wendlebury Barrow. He tries to convince her not to go by telling her that in a place like that she could easily get killed in her sleep, but she goes anyway. Maybe he should have just boughten her a copy of Maureen Johnson's Your Guide to Not Getting Murdered in a Quaint English Village.

Everyone in the village knew and adored Auntie May and Sophie tries to fit in by getting a job at the village bookshop and getting involved with various groups in preparation for the Village Show. She is suspicious of just about everybody and everything, though, with Damian's words in the back of her head.

I have mixed feelings. Sophie is a bit of a flake with her constant suspicions and inability to place well-known literary references and her insistence that she's going to be a successful writer because her great aunt was -- as though it's genetic or would seep into her from the cottage like osmosis. 

I do love a quaint English village, though. Especially one where murder occurs. 

The murder here takes place in the prologue and then we have to wait until 65% for it to happen in the story and it's all wrapped up way too quickly with a neat little ribbon and some whiplash.

Still, there were enough enjoyable bits that I read right through and then immediately downloaded the next one.

The second book, Trick or Murder?, begins shortly after the first book ends. A new vicar has arrived in town and quickly rubs everyone the wrong way by banning Halloween and insisting that they all participate in Guy Fawkes Night instead -- something that hasn't been done in town in generations. 

I kept waiting for a murder.

And waiting.

And ...

Soon the book was done and I was able to go to bed.

I did still enjoy the village and its inhabitants -- the ones who have been there for a while moreso than newcomer Sophie, but she may still grow on me in books 3-7.

If you want to share whatever has kept you up past your bedtime because you just needed one more chapter ... or the entire book ... please comment! My TBR pile is already toppling, but I can always add more.