Book review: Plaid and Plagiarism by Molly MacRae

I think I bought Plaid & Plagiarism from the thrift store. I had initially thought it was from Barnes & Noble, but I didn't buy it online and I don't think I wouldn't have bought it in person, even though it totally is my jam according to the cover and description.
It's a mystery! (lol)

Set in the weeks before the annual Inversgail Literature Festival in Scotland, Plaid and Plagiarism begins on a morning shortly after the four women take possession of their bookshop in the Highlands. Unfortunately, the move to Inversgail hasn’t gone as smoothly as they’d planned.
First, Janet Marsh is told she’ll have to wait before moving into her new home. Then she finds out the house has been vandalized. Again. The chief suspect? Una Graham, an advice columnist for the local paper—who’s trying to make a name for herself as an investigative reporter. When Janet and her business partners go looking for clues at the house, they find a body—it’s Una, in the garden shed, with a sickle in her neck. 
Who wanted Una dead? After discovering a cache of nasty letters, Janet and her friends are beginning to wonder who didn’t, including Janet’s ex-husband. Surrounded by a cast of characters with whom readers will fall in love, the new owners of Yon Bonnie Books set out to solve Una’s murder so they can get back to business.

Right? The Scottish setting makes this book unique (to me), as I generally read books set in the US or England. Owning a bookshop sounds just divine. Janet is a reference librarian who worked for years in a public library! Overall, I should've liked this book more than I did.

I kept losing track of the many characters. There are four (seriously) main characters: Janet, the librarian; Christine, her best friend who is a social worker; and their daughters, who are a lawyer and an investigative journalist, respectively, and whose names I can't be bothered to look up. I kept forgetting whose daughter was who, as well as who everybody was. Was X the constable (police officer), the man who used to own the bookstore, or somebody else? Una was the only person that I didn't mistake for anyone else, as her name is distinctive and she's the one who was murdered.

I knew this was a cozy mystery going in, as the protagonists own a bookstore, hello, but it was hilarious to me that "solving the murder" consisted of the four of them chatting and texting about it every so often and writing in a shared cloud document. They also pestered people with questions and called the constable about everything, of course. Despite all this, and the continual adding of clues and red herrings and characters, I was surprised when Janet (and the others, maybe?) all of a sudden knew who the murderer was when something went down at the local crime author's place. There was nothing that led up to that revelation, apart from the murderer and their spouse acting suspicious.

This is spoilery, so don't read if you want to read this book, but I have to vent about it: the whole trash-dumping plotline was so annoying. At first the women thought it was a warning or a clue about the murder, and it ended up being (get this) Janet's son's mother-in-law, who was still livid at Janet because she "supported" her son and his wife (the lady's daughter) eloping instead of having a big wedding. Which was five years ago. And which Janet had nothing to do with (it sounds like she just went "oh well, congratulations" to her adult son AFTER the elopement had already taken place). For THAT that witch was dumping trash all over her grandchildren's other grandma's house??? And she got no comeuppance!! I would have told her off so hard.

Still spoilers: Also, at some point Janet meets the lady that was renting Janet's house from her with her husband when Janet was in the US, and the woman basically screams at her that it is NOT nice to meet her, that Janet's house ruined her life because her husband had an affair with Una. Like what? This chick really blames Janet and her house for something her husband and some other woman did? I was shocked she wasn't more of a suspect in Una's murder, but we're immediately told there's an alibi. Nobody ever gave her the dressing-down she deserved, either.

Spoilers continue: You know what also made me really mad? Janet kept being told by the constable  that her house wasn't ready and she couldn't go back for like over a week, and it turned out the constable's grandmother needed a place to stay until her spot in the nursing home was available, and instead of having the old lady stay in his place or renting a hotel room for her like a normal person, he LIES TO JANET AND PUTS HIS GRANDMOTHER UP IN HER HOUSE!!!!!!!! During the day, he had the old lady stay in the bookshop where Janet and co. would bring her tea and scones without knowing who she was or anything about it, which means that not only were they unwittingly giving her free room and board, but also free elder care during the day!!! I would have yelled at this idiot so hard. I would have yelled at his superiors and demanded they punish him. I would have made him pay me rent. That's just so unethical!! It's a police officer misusing his power!! And Janet was definitely miffed but she did nothing!!!! LITERALLY WHAT THE EFFFFFF.

While the story did keep me turning pages, I found the writing to be clunky and awkward in parts, and that kept taking me out of it. There was too much awkward description of people's hand gestures, and there was one semi-physical encounter that involved three of the characters that I kept rereading because I could not figure out what was going on, and why. The way they all talked didn't feel much like real people talking. Idk, the mystery just wasn't formulated in a way that I'm used to. I'm not going to go out of my way to find the next book in the series, but if I find it in the thrift store or the library, I'll read it.

I love this book cover. I think it is my favorite part of the book. It's infinitely better than the other options I've seen for this book.

Score: 5 out of 5 stars
Read in: March 6
From: thrift store?
Format: paperback
Status: I know I should give it away but the cover is so cute