Book Review: Murder of a Barbie and Ken

Book: Murder of a Barbie and Ken (A Scumble River Mystery book #5) by Denise Swanson

Edition: Paperback

Rating: 4 stars

Review:

Secrets and lies were at the center of this story as Skye Denison, in between helping students as the school psychologist, was trying to solve the mystery of who killed Barbie and Ken Addison.

Skye found their bodies when she went to the Addisons' home to pick up a week's worth of Instant Gourmet food she had won at Barbie's Instant Gourmet product party. It's bad enough she had to deal with that gruesome discovery but prior to that she was dealing with an unexpected house guest, her boyfriend Dr. Simon Reid's wayward mother Bunny. She had just showed up at Skye's house and it was weird especially since Skye had no idea who she was.

Skye quickly found out that Simon and his mother have a very distant relationship and it looked like it was going to take a miracle for any sort of reconciliation to occur between them. While trying to deal with the annoyance of an unexpected (and unwanted) house guest, she was trying to figure out who had murdered Barbie and Ken Addison and why.

While Skye looked into the murders, she uncovered a lot of secrets, lies and a lot of possible motives. And as she investigated she was trying to reign in Frannie Ryan and Justin Boward, two high school students who were trying to write about the murders for the school newspaper. She didn't want them to get hurt especially since there was a killer on the loose.

What I like about this fast-paced story beside the drama, suspense and humor was that it kept my attention and that it didn't take long before Skye stumbled upon the mystery. However, there were times where it felt like the story focused a little too much on Bunny and her antics but not so much that it distracted from the mystery.

Scumble River is a really small town which at times is a hindrance to Skye living a happy life when a lot of the residents are stuck in the past and tend to judge what people do. While at other times living in the small town is very helpful when Skye is trying to solve a murder and she can easily acquire information due to everyone pretty much knowing what everyone else is doing.

I enjoyed reading this and the other book I had read from this series but I will not be reading the two additional books (#10 and #16) that I have sitting on the shelf. And that is only because as I had mentioned in the currently reading post for this book that I have not been reading this series in order. Which is why I decided to do just that and the next time I buy any books I'm going to pick up the first one because I want to know how this series started.