Come Shell or High Water by Molly MacRae

Item: Come Shell or High Water
Rating: 5
Author: karenbaron

Posted June 22, 2024 by karenbaron in Mystery, Paranormal, Review, Series / 0 Comments

I voluntarily reviewed an Advance Reader Copy from NetGalley. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Come Shell or High Water

by Molly MacRae

Series: Haunted Shell Shop Mystery #1
Series Rating:

Published by Crooked Lane Books on June 25, 2024
Setting: North Carolina
Genres: Cozy Paranormal Mystery
Pages: 302
Format: Audible Audiobook, Audio CD, ebook, Hardcover, Kindle
Source: NetGalley
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Get Your Copy at: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, Nook

From Molly MacRae, acclaimed author of the Highland Bookshop Mysteries, the first in a charming new series set on a beautiful barrier island off the coast of North Carolina and featuring a widowed folklorist, a seashell shop, and the ghost of an 18th century pirate…

As a professional storyteller, Maureen Nash can’t help but see the narrative cues woven through her life. Like the series of letters addressed to her late husband from a stranger—the proprietor of The Moon Shell, a shop on Ocracoke Island, off the coast of North Carolina. The store is famous with shell collectors, but it’s the cryptic letters from Allen Withrow, the shop’s owner, that convince Maureen to travel to the small coastal town in the middle of hurricane season. At the very least, she expects she’ll get a good story out of the experience, never anticipating it could end up a murder mystery . . .

In Maureen’s first hours on the storm-lashed island, she averts several life-threatening accidents, stumbles over the body of a controversial Ocracoke local, and meets the ghost of an eighteenth-century Welsh pirate, Emrys Lloyd. To the untrained eye, all these unusual occurrences would seem to be random misfortunes, but Maureen senses there may be something connecting these stories. With Emrys’s supernatural assistance, and the support of a few new friends, Maureen sets out unravel the truth, find a killer, and hopefully give this tale a satisfying ending . . . while also rewriting her own.

Come Shell or High Water by Molly MacRae has our sleuth questioning her sanity.

What does Allen Withrow have anything to do with her husband?

Maureen Nash

Maureen Nash is a young widow with two young adult sons who have decided to come to Ocracoke Island, North Carolina, because of some letters. I have to admit that I didn’t know if I would like Maureen, but as I got further into the book, I liked her. Maureen loves to tell stories. She was a malacologist until she retired but can now talk to a ghost pirate named Emrys Lloyd. I like how Maureen is focused on trying to figure out what happened to her before she had her concussion and why Allen Withrow sent her husband those letters.

The Victim

Allen Withrow was a very conflicted character when he was alive. He was born on the island but traveled a lot because of his father. His mom brought the two of them back to Ocracoke, and then he stayed put—well until Allen decided to leave. He wasn’t a great person, and Maureen started to understand that while she was investigating his death. I don’t think that he deserved to die, especially the way that he did, even if he didn’t do a lot of good deeds, but he did make up for that after he died.

Five Stars

My rating for Come Shell or High Water by Molly MacRae is five stars. I also recommend it, as it’s a great book. The two biggest things that brought me to this book were the cover and the plot summary. Ms. MacRae crafted an amazing read, and I can’t wait to see what Maureen, Emrys, and the others on the island get up to in the next book. This author has made me a fan of her writing after this book.

Thank you for dropping by! I hope you enjoyed this review of Come Shell or High Water by Molly MacRae.

Until the next time,

Happy Reading!

About Molly MacRae

Molly MacRae spent twenty years in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains of Upper East Tennessee, where she managed The Book Place, an independent bookstore; may it rest in peace. Before the lure of books hooked her, she was curator of the history museum in Jonesborough, Tennessee’s oldest town.

MacRae lives with her family in Champaign, Illinois, where she recently retired from connecting children with books at the public library.

^ got the about part from her website

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