Burned (Regan Reilly Mysteries, No. 8)

It is an very enjoyable fun read. I would recommend this book for anyone looking for a light mystery.

I loved it from the first disc to the last...but it ended too soon.

Just as Regan Reilly is ready to leave Los Angeles for New York to visit with her parents and her fiancée, Jack (no relation) Reilly, the worst snowstorm of the year hits New York and all flights to New York and other points on the East Coast are cancelled. Regan is disappointed as is Jack and her mom as they had plans to work on their upcoming wedding. However, Regan's best friend Kit calls her. Kit is in Hawaii at the Waikiki Waters Playground & Resort with and extra bed in her room. She wants Regan to have a "bachelorette" weekend with her and meet her new love interest, Steve. Regan arrives and finds out that Dorinda Dawes, a newsletter/gossip columnist and photographer who works for the hotel, has been found on the beach. Dorinda washed ashore and was found wearing a beautiful shell lei that belonged to a former Hawaiian queen and has been missing for thirty years from the museum where it was stolen. The manager of the hotel, Will Brown, hires Regan to look into Dorinda's death as he doesn't think it was an accident as the police have ruled it. Since her friend Kit is busy with her new boyfriend, Steve, Regan decides to take the case. Will Brown is anxious to be assured that all is well at the hotel as many pranks have been played and strange accidents lately. Will does not want anything to interfere with an upcoming charity ball and auction where the twin shell lei to the one found on Dorinda is to be auctioned off. Will is also very busy handing a strange tour group from Hudville. The group is led by two elderly twin sisters, Ev and Gert, who are managing the monies left by a benefactor in Hudville to allow groups from that very rainy town to visit Hawaii. These are just a few of the crazy, likable and sometimes criminal characters the reader meets throughout the story. This is LIGHT reading but a lot of fun trying to guess the villains and how Regan will solve the mystery. These Regan Reilly stories are NOT serious mysteries but I find them to be more of a comedy with a little romance and detective work thrown in. Just a light fun read! Enjoy it for what it is!!

California-based private investigator Regan Reilly is all packed and ready to join her fiancé, Jack, in New York to plan their upcoming wedding when a monstrous snowstorm blankets the East Coast and closes all the airports. When Regan's best friend, Kit, calls and invites her to join her for a weekend in Hawaii, Regan is contemplating the trip. However, when a body washes up on the sandy shores of the resort where Kit is staying, Regan's mind is made up. She's going! The dead woman is Dorinda Dawes, photographer and columnist for the Waikiki Waters Playground and Resort newsletter. In death, as in life, Dorinda manages to create a scandal not only by turning up dead but also by wearing an antique Hawaiian lei that was stolen thirty years earlier. Regan isn't in Hawaii long before the manager of Waikiki Waters, Will Brown, asks her to look into the mystery of Dorinda's death. While the consensus is that Dorinda's death was accidental, Will and others aren't so sure. Someone seems to be sabotaging the resort --- and with the "Be a Princess Ball" only days away, Will needs to get to the bottom of these strange happenings. While Regan is delving into the mysteries involving the hotel, Kit is throwing herself headfirst into a new relationship with Steve, a man who Regan finds tolerable at best. Now she not only has a murder to investigate but also the smooth-talking, self-made businessman who is thisclose to stealing her best friend's heart. While the waters in Hawaii are crystal clear, just about everything else seems as clear as mud. What was Dorinda doing on the beach alone at night? Who did she encounter while she was there? Why was she wearing a stolen lei that had been missing for thirty years? And, last but not least, it's beginning to look like the real question isn't "Who wanted Dorinda dead?" but more like "Who didn't?" BURNED contains an interesting array of characters --- including a newly engaged couple, Jason and Carla; a pushy social climbing ex-attorney, Jazzy, who seems to have a too-close relationship with Kit's new love interest and who works for a mysterious millionaire striving to launch a new clothing line; a motley crew of hotel employees; and a very strange and an unlikely group of tourists from a rainy Pacific Northwest town called Hudville. BURNED is a fast-paced, feel-good kind of mystery, and the characters are fun and diverse. This eighth adventure in Carol Higgins Clark's bestselling series is a very enjoyable read. --- Reviewed by Amie Taylor

Private investigation Regan Reilly is ready to leave California and spend the weekend in New York with her fiancé Jack. She's also supposed to go over wedding plans with her mother, a bestselling author. A terrible blizzard closes down the airports in the East so when Megan's best friend Kit calls her from Hawaii to invite her to stay with her for a long weekend at the Waikiki Waters Playground and Resort she gladly accepts. When she arrives she learns that an employee of the hotel washed ashore; the police declared it an accidental drowning. What is strange about her death is she was wearing a priceless lei that belonged to Hawaii's last queen. The manager of the hotel Will Brown has doubts about the death and hires Regan to investigate. The lei is the twin to the one that is being auctioned off at the hotel on Saturday. The thief who originally stole the lei returns and takes both leis. What follows is comedy of errors as Regan and the police successfully find the leis. In the meantime, Regan is also involved is saving the lives of two people who just got engaged from two ruthless killers and investigating Kit's new boyfriend to make sure he's on the up and up. What starts out as a vacation for the heroine turns into a non stop workathon where she tries to juggle three cases at the same time without getting killed. Carol Higgins Clark has created a fantastic private investigator that is a cross between Kinsey Milhone and Irene Kelly. There is so much action that takes place readers will feel that they have taken a ride on the world's fastest roller coaster. Harriet Klausner