This was a strong sequel in the Pacific Coast Highway Mystery series, it had that element that I was looking for from the first book. The characters continued to feel like they belonged in this storyline. I enjoyed the mystery element to this book and thought the overall feel worked with the book.

📚 PRE-PUBLICATION BOOK REVIEW 📚

Cinnamon Girl By Daniel Weizmann
Publication Date: May 28, 2024
Publisher: Melville House Publishing

📚MY RATING: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

📚MY REVIEW:

This was a gritty thriller, set amidst the backdrop of the LA music scene, with a pseudo private detective who is a true guy's guy. The story really kept my interest as the layers of the decades-old mystery unfolded piece by piece. Anytime I had to put the book down over the last couple days, I found myself thinking about its story and wondering what was going to happen next. There was just something about this plotline that pulled me in and intrigued me.

The writing style is definitively masculine. I don't really know if that's the right way to describe it...but the writing is matter-of-fact, gritty, and without any descriptive fluff. The characters were real, they were flawed, and they were written in such a way that you felt connected to the history shared in these pages. As I read, I found myself caring about what was ultimately going to happen to everyone and how this twisty mystery was all going to wind up for them. The ending was satisfying and unexpected, and I didn't guess how it was going to go until I was pretty close to the end.

Overall, this was a great book! It's the second book in this Pacific Coast Highway Mystery series, and while there were a couple early-on references to the first book, I didn't feel like I was lost because I hadn't read it. I'm curious about the main character's history though, so the first book is now on my TBR list. Weizmann's book was unexpected, because I didn't know a lot going into it. I haven't heard much about it -- and I don't know why. I found that I really enjoyed this read and I absolutely recommend this one. I want to send a big thank you to NetGalley and Melville House Publishing for gifting me this advanced copy in exchange for my honest review!

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I liked the book despite it not being my favorite genre.. The writing is great and the characters well developed. If you like mysteries and interesting characters give it a try.

Thanks to Netgalley for the eARC of this novel. This feels like a throwback book about a throwback band. But in a good way. Zantz, the main character, is the classic LA gumshoe. A real Philip Marlowe, except that he is trying to get in touch his feelings and he manages to get everyone to talk mostly via empathy and not tough guy antics. Weizmann's writing, which is lyrical and provides only enough detail to get the gist of the thing and leaves the rest to the reader, feels like a dream, but that masks a relentless, classic noir structure that takes the reader into all the distinctive oddball cubbyholes in LA on the way to the novel's surprising conclusion. Both novels in this series are very good.