I didn't hate it. That would mean this novel had evoked an actual emotion in me. It did no such thing.

I found it in the Mystery section on NetGalley, but there doesn’t seem to be much mystery.

There is a murder in the first chapter, but by the end of the first chapter we already catch a glimpse of the murderer and in the fourth chapter we learn his name. By that time we’ve also learned that the death of chapter one is not treated as suspicious by the police.

It seems unlikely to become a murder mystery. Unless someone else gets killed.

There’s a treasure map. Or rather two. Two teenage girls were gifted a map in 1908. It seems neither ever went looking for the treasure. In the present day (2024) another teenage girl finds one of the maps in the place where it was originally hidden.

Will she find the treasure? A scene set in 1916 spoils that mystery. Or at least in part.

Some parts of the story are promising of a mystery, such as when Louis discovers the map in his sister’s hiding place. But any excitement derived from that is quickly quenched by the author. It’s as if she doesn’t want the reader to get too excited.

Not what I expect from a mystery.

3 and 1 / 2 stars

Treasure! Pirate maps! What’s not to love?

More than a century ago, a pirate buried his treasure of relics and gold on his property in what is now Brewster, Cape Cod. Then it was a little community called Millbury, Massachusetts.

Time passes and it is now present day.

Nancy Caldwell and her husband Paul live on the property next to the now vacant lot where the treasure is supposedly buried. Nancy and her niece Jane, take it into their minds to locate the treasure. However, the property does not belong to Jane. It belongs to Max, a man who is the descendent of the original owner, the pirate.

This book tells of Nancy and Jane’s adventures in trying to locate the treasure, But they and Max are not the only ones looking.

There are some tense moments in this little cozy mystery. A standoff with the bad guys finds Nancy in some real trouble. Jane seems to go missing.

The part about this book I liked the most was the flashbacks to the older days where Anna and her mother’s life are discussed. It was very interesting and nicely written. I found the present day part of the story somewhat predictable. This is a nice little book.

I want to thank NetGalley and Bestruna Books/IBPA Members’ Titles for forwarding to me a copy of this book for me to read, enjoy and review. The opinions expressed in this review are solely my own.

Thanks to NetGalley for an advance copy of this mystery novel.

I was intrigued by the map on the cover, and it featured very heavily in the plot. The drawer of the map was a man with many valuable gold coins, related to his adventures with pirates in the 1800s. He hid them on the property around his house and made maps for each of the young girls who cleaned for him so they share some of his treasure. The rest he hid around his property, marking each cache with an X on his maps, and planned to give them to his little friends. But before he could explain about the maps to them, his house burned down and he died. Each girl found the two coins meant for each of them, but then hid the maps to the bulk of the coins and forgot about them.

In the present day, Nancy Caldwell is an experienced hunter of treasure. The property where the gold is hidden is next door to her house, a piece of abandoned land. When her two nieces come to visit for the summer, one finds a map hidden in the baseboard of her bedroom. This gets Nancy looking, unaware that there is another man looking too.

I felt this book was slow going at first, with lots of history of people vaguely involved with the gold coins hunt. It felt like a YA book, but it hasn't been advertised as such. I did start to enjoy the read after about 25% was completed.

Nancy Caldwell and her niece Jane are hunting for buried treasure in Cape Cod. Part of a series set in Brewster this is a gentle mystery. If you’re on cape you might enjoy it because the author uses real names and places.