Will Bess and Margaret ever get a moment's peace?

Bess and Margaret have just moved into their new home when Bess’ relative, journalist Hattie, turns up. Hattie is investigating a wellness centre where something doesn’t seem right, and as usual Bess and Margaret find themselves embroiled in the madness that ensues as a result.

I love the Murder Under the Gum Trees series. They are all standalone and Margaret and Bess won my heart in the very first book. They are complete opposites but a perfect pairing and somehow murder and mayhem always seems to find them wherever they find themselves. This time they are pulled into the mayhem by Hattie turning up and using unconventional methods to get them to help clear her of alleged charges and uncover the truth about the suspicious wellness centre. No sooner had Hattie started sharing the details did I know Bess wouldn’t be able to resist helping. Her empathy for others is unmatched.

It’s always Margaret in these stories who I end up loving more and more. She's an ice queen through and through, but she sometimes melts a little for Bess but never fully. Her one liners, timing, presence all have me grinning and loving her no matter the situation. However this time the mask slipped a few times, unexpectedly showing more vulnerability than I’d ever thought possible, and it was great. It gave better understanding and only endeared her to me more.

Bess and Margaret are one of my favourite pairings and I really hope we’ll get more of them in future stories!

I love the gentle humour at the start.
The cover, for me, does not match the main’s descriptions (tho’ I do like the cover, and they have never matched the series!)
Early pacing is good. Just when the unbelievably bad houseguest gets irritating (I have a low tolerance for cartoonishly bad characters!) the plot moves on.
About 40% in, both mains are keeping a secret from each other….. they have gone to say several times but there has always been confensioninterruptus! That never goes well. There continues to be many lines that make me smile, but I would like things to move forward as I feel pace has stuttered slightly. However, just after that the pace picked up, and unusually I was really interested to find out how everything would work out. It all worked out in the end but a great job on keeping me guessing as to what would actually happen, or what did actually happen and why.
Some lines I loved! “After nearly being run over by a mobile library van…… “Is there a Dewey Decimal emergency? Is someone holding onto an overdue Maeve Binchy?””

A Curious Journey by Jess Lea
Murder Under The Gum Trees #3

A few years have passed since Margaret and Bess met and worked together to solve a few murders. They are in love and have just purchased their own home. As they are hoping to settle in and christen their new living space, they are less than thrilled to have Bess’s Aunt Hattie show up wanting to move in with them. Tensions rise, Hattie does something they cannot forgive, and they are off to find her instead of settling in as they had hoped to.

What I liked:
* Bess Campbell: Focused in living a positive life, empathetic, open, honest, caring, good friend, has a difficult relationship with her family, loves Margaret, nurturer
* Margaret Gale: protective, strong personality, closed off, controlled, dark, snarky, softer with Bess, worried about her health, loves Bess
* Aunt Hattie: annoying, brilliant, pushy, bends the rules, journalist-writer, in a relationship with Len
* Len: driver, met Hattie through a yorkipoo dog club, strong, really likes Hattie,
* The way Hattie grew on me and also how Bess and Margaret began to see her differently
* How the death-murder of Nick Mantiatis was solved
* Being able to thoroughly dislike the Pyrite Center that was more cult than anything else – also hoping Karma would hit hard for a few of the henchmen and “gurus”
* That Margaret, Bess, and Hattie came through alright in the end
* Hattie not deferring to Bess’s mother’s wishes
* The plot, pacing, setting, and writing
* The way the story ended

What I didn’t like:
* Who and what I was meant not to like
* Thinking about how easily Kevin and his henchmen were able to do evil things for money

Did I like this book? Yes
Would I read more by this author? Yes

Thank you to NetGalley and Ylva Publishing for the ARC – This is my honest review.

4-5 Stars

My favorite Australian cozy mystery solving duo return for another adventure. Bess Campbell and Margaret Gale are still together and showing their commitment by purchasing a house and sharing a mortgage. The first night in their new home is interrupted by the arrival of a relative of Bess. She is grumpy, demanding and ungrateful. But when she takes off with Bess’s car the pair follow her. The relative was once a successful investigative journalist. Along the way the pair discover a body and are seemingly drawn into another mystery.

Margaret and Bess continue to delight me. I’ve read their two previous adventures. Their opposite personalities and unflinching adoration of each other is lovely. Margaret’s acerbic wit made me laugh more than once. Bess is the free spirit to Margaret’s rigid personality. I’m not going to give details of the mystery but it does lead to learning a little more about Bess’s past. I saw one reviewer suggest this may be the last book for the pair. I hope not. I would read many more mysteries featuring these two. But if this is the final, it leaves them at a good place. (4.5 Stars)

I love this cosy crime/murder series.
I appreciate the appearance of spikiness of Margaret - abrasive to the world but adores Bess. Bess can be seen as the opposite of Margaret - colourful, optimistic, always needing to think the best of people - and adores Margaret. Yet somehow they end up in difficult situations where their lives are at risk - and they are sure the other is keeping secrets from them and is about to leave and blow their world apart.
They always have each others back, would sacrifice themselves, but thankfully never need to.
In this book they have literally just moved into the house that they have bought together when a relative is on their doorstep with their dog needing a place to stay. As this is fiction they let her in - I would not have done so but I am quite anti-social. The relative is a grumpy, rude, investigative journalist who soon needs their help.
They end up going undercover into a health resort that is based around the local pink salt lake - and investigating another murder. This is as always quite dangerous for them but ultimately brings them closer together and planning their future.
I do really like this couple - they have a realism to their relationship that probably to some looks unrealistic. Nothing goes quite how they want it to - until the point where it is literally life or death.

I really recommend this series. I love it.

Like the last book, this was highly anticipated. Another adventure with sweet Bess Campbell and her ice queen Margaret Gale. This time, they are settling into their new home and finally, nobody is trying to kill them and all is well in their world.

Until it isn’t. And one of the tricky things you encounter with an established couple is the danger of turning into a tired American soap opera. It’s a challenge to capture our attention when we’re catching up with Bess and Margaret as a couple - again. But like life, things (even crazy things) can and do happen. And like the last book, Jess Lea takes us on another intriguing adventure into the thoughts and feelings of Bess and Margaret as they respond to whatever life has thrown at them. Of course, this is embedded in what else? A mystery! And it involves a strange multi-level marketing/cultish organization they must investigate which could actually be a matter of life and death. Our main characters are blessedly hilarious in their own ways, per usual. In fact, this may be the funniest one yet in terms of clever and fabulously witty. More of Jess Lea’s razor sharp wit. I hope Jess doesn’t make us wait long for another story.
I received an ARC from Ylva Publishing in exchange for an honest review.

I don’t know why society has decided that all lesbian romance has to be so dark and dismal. Is that how we are as a people? Anyway, this book, and the entire series honestly, is not that. It’s got dark humor, but gratefully, I didn’t cry once. This, to me, is a good thing, in case you are asking. I don’t actually enjoy being sad and crying. Margaret and Bess are hilarious and endearing. They are complete opposite in the best way. In the story they buy their first house and cousin Hattie shows up at their door on move in day. Early on you decide you want Hattie to die a slow painful death, but that soon changes. As Margaret and Bess chase Hattie around the country, they end up in trouble with a shady group of overly happy people. I very much enjoyed the story and laughed the whole way through. One small wish would be that Margaret and Bess could help themselves out of dangerous situations. It seems like they are always being saved, which makes them feel sightly helpless. I wanted them to be the hero’s of their own story. Alas, it worked out and had a perfectly charming ending.

Wild story pulls you in (I read it all in one sitting!)
A Curious Journey kicks off with main characters Bess and Margaret moving in together. What should be a time and cause for celebration is quickly disrupted by Bess's family. They get roped into dark shenanigans often with disastrous results and zero thanks for their help. Although I'm not a fan of the ice queen trope, Margaret (a former or semi reformed ice queen) is a highlight in the book when she lets loose sarcasm, sass, and deadpan snark either about the goings on affecting them or the people responsible for it. She is a large source of the humor in the story which is welcome every time it shows up; it helps to cut thru the tension and injustice. Despite the dark happenings, Margaret and Bess find time and opportunity to get frisky and be romantic in ways that totally suit their characters at this point in their development. I sat down to start reading the book - just a chapter or two - and ended up reading the entire thing in a sitting; fortunately, I finished before my e-reader's battery drained down to zero. There are disturbing things in the story with no quick or clear way to resolution and people are mistreated in various ways so heads up to those who find those kinds of things triggering. Things are not as they seem, there is corruption and character assassination at play, secrets are being kept, and chicken sitting figures into the story so a mixed bag of stuff to keep you turning pages. If you've read the other two books in this series you'll appreciate the growth of the main characters but if you've not read either of those books, this one (like the others) works well as a standalone story. There's tons of shenanigans in all the books and quirky characters to keep you amused or even thankful you don't know some of them in real life.
I believe this is the final story in the series however I'd be keen to read even a short story follow-up that checks in on our beloved mains given where they are in all respects by the end of this book.

Margaret and Bess really can’t have more than two months of peace… apparently XD
This is a good ending of a series, I like it a lot. It’s so much funny and the way the relationship between the main characters continue to evolve… masterpiece!
I think I will miss Bess and Margaret a lot, but I leave them in a good place… until the next time, maybe?

Thank you Netgalley and Ylva Publishing for the arc.

Thank you NetGalley and Publisher for allowing me to read and review this book.

I very much enjoyed this book. The writing was great and the characters were well developed. I hope to read more from this author in the future.