Corked by Cabernet

What's not to love about A Wine Lover's Mystery series? It's set in the Napa Valley, more presicely in a winery, it has fiesty and funny heroine, a sexy hero and it has recipes!

Here's the blurb for Corked by Cabernet by Michele Scott:

Nikki Sands is exactly where she wants to be as the Manager of the Malveaux Estates in Napa Valley—and "shacking up" with the owner, her boyfriend Derek Malveaux. But she starts to lose control when some self-helpers arrive and steal her peace of mind...

Nikki couldn't be happier settling into the vineyard with her boyfriend Derek. But when a guru and his followers check into the winery's boutique hotel and spa for a retreat, she feels far from enlightened as she's forced to take on the role of event coordinator. Their first outing on the famous Napa Valley Wine train reinforces her doubt when a member goes missing. The guru's devotee is found in the wine storage car where someone quite literally—and fatally—put a cork in him. It's up to Nikki to stop a killer who's developed a real taste for murder...

In the fifth installement of the series, we find Nikki organizing a retreat for guru Sansibaba and his followers - S.E.E. (Source of Enlightened Elite) the newest pet project of Simon and Marco. Derek is out of town for business. The first event Nikki finds the body of one of the members of S.E.E.. Detective Yummy, excuse, Robinson asks Nikki to keep her ears open, basically he asks for her help.

The book has the usual fast pace that I expect for a Michele Scott book. There's also the comic relief of Simon and Marco, I love those two, but they've also grown on me...there's a depth in each of them that I hadn't seen yet. We're also given a little info on Robinson's life, which explains a lot for me. And then there's Derek, although we don't see him all that much in this book, he does put on quite a performance at the end.

Getting to the murder, and the motive behind it, it just doesn't make sense, to me at least. It was explained, but it felt like a weak excuse.

Corked by Cabernet by Michele Scott (4/5) Mystery; Published: Berkley Prime Crime (2/2009); Series: # 5, A Wine Lover's Mystery; 2009 100 + Reading Challenge (32); 2009 Support Your Local Library (27); 2009 Pub Challenge (7);