Lillian Dove gets involved in two different cases. One her mother drags her into, the other is because of her own nosiness. Having not read the other books in this series, I feel like I am missing something that happened before this story. It's a good story, but for me it was lacking something. I voluntarily reviewed a copy of this book.

I only got a third of the way through the ARC of With a Vengeance before it archived and I could no longer read it. So, this feedback and rating of two stars is for chapters 1-9.

First, the book read like a first draft, with many spelling errors, rogue punctuation, and very oddly worded sentences. A few sentences were missing entirely. It may have been edited before the published version was released, so this issue isn't weighed heavily in my rating.

The story itself was promising and I was able to get through the plot quickly. I was looking forward to learning more about the central mystery.

Unfortunately, the only character I liked was the cat, and maybe Leveque.

Lillian and her mother, Dahlia, appeared to be built up into somewhat complex characters, but I found Dahlia to be really annoying and manipulative and I didn't like how Lillian just let her walk all over her. Maybe this conflict gets resolved by the end of the book, or somewhat resolved. Lillian, considering that she's the lead in a mystery, wasn't very curious and didn't really ask any good follow-up questions. While she appeared to be nice, she often came off as condescending.

Leveque looked to be somewhat complex, but he wasn't in the first chapters of the book enough for me to see how he developed. We didn't learn much about Charles, the chief of police, which is unfortunate since he's supposed to be the occasional love interest of Lillian. It would have been nice to see them interact more from the start, especially outside of his job. Maybe one of their dates or something like that.

A big plus for the story is that I was able to follow the plot and get a grasp of the characters well enough, despite this being one book in a series. So, with more editing, I can see it being a good stand-alone.

In conclusion, I enjoyed reading what I was able to read, but I hope it got a few more rounds of editing before it was published.

This is the fourth book in the Lillian Dove Mystery series, Lillian finds herself involved against her best instincts in the hunt for a serial killer. Her mother's friend gets her looking into her husband being a bigamist and wants to find his son. The bigger mystery is how Mrs Goyen is acting. Struggling against becoming involved in these mysteries could lead her too close to a killer.
This was my first look at this series. I feel that you would appreciate the story more if you knew more about Lillian’s back story and relationships as this impacted greatly on the story and how she went about her investigation. I would recommend looking at the other stories first.

Thanks to @netgalley and @booksgosocial for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This book was definitely an enjoyable read, but I think you might have to read the others in the series?! I felt a little lost a few times but it was a good book! It had suspense, intrigue, actuin, murder, mystery, serial killer, and a few crazy twists and turns! The storyline was interesting and flowed nicely! It was a decent read but I wished I'd read the whole series! Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for sharing this book with me!