Come Shell or High Water Book Review: A Ghostly Cozy Mystery

I’ve been spending a lot of time at the beach these past few weeks. It seemed fitting for me to read a beach themed cozy mystery. In today’s Come Shell or High Water book review by Molly MacRae we’ll be discussing hurricane season and haunted shells. Oh! And the crazy situation that Maureen Nash finds herself in when she visits Ocracoke Island. It turns out it’s a bad idea to come unannounced, during the biggest storm of the season.

If you enjoy cozy mysteries and are looking for recommendations, you can read more of my reviews here.

What is Come Shell or High Water About?

When widowed folklorist Maureen Nash visits a legendary North Carolina barrier island shell shop, she discovers its resident ghost pirate and the mystery of a local’s untimely death . . .

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. (from Amazon.com)

My Thoughts

I think this first book is a promising start to the Haunted Shell Shop Mystery series. I did find the first couple of chapters confusing because Maureen has an accident and loses some memory temporarily. But once the story was back on track and she started remembering things, everything began to make a lot more sense.

The first side characters that we meet are Bert and Glady, a brother sister duo. They’ve lived in Ocracoke forever and think they know everything. They’re the people that come to Maureen’s rescue after her accident. The two of them like to talk and the back and forth between the two of them was hard to keep up with. I was very confused as to why they were so anti police, but it eventually made sense. Eespecially after we got to meet some of the police figures in their town.

I was worried Emrys was going to be a mean ghost, but he and Maureen wound up making a great pair! It’s very interesting to have the detective team be a human, and the ghost of an 18th century pirate. There were times when Maureen would use modern words that Emrys had no idea what they meant, and that made me chuckle. I liked Maureen as a main character and thought she did a good job of keeping up with everyone in town.

My Critique

Personally, I felt that the story was confusing for the first couple of chapters. After Maureen’s accident when Bert and Glady found her, it was just so confusing. Bert and Glady kept talking over each other and insisting on not calling the police. It was drawn out for a couple of chapters as they went out to find the body. And the whole time it was discussed that Maureen may or may not have seen the body. Plust it may have been 2 different bodies.

I just felt like that could have used some editing to make it more concise. It was confusing, and it could have been more clear to readers what was going on.

Who would I recommend this book to?

If you enjoy cozy mysteries, the beach, ghosts, ghost stories, and island life you may enjoy this book. It’s such an interesting story. I look forward to finding out what Maureen does with the shell shop in the future.

I have a feeling that Maureen will be helping Emrys to sort out his past life. He has a lot more information to find out about why he is the way he is.

In Conclusion

​Thanks for checking out my book review of Come Shell or High Water by Molly MacRae. This is a fun introduction to a new cozy mystery series. The fact that it takes place in a secluded beach town in the Outer Banks is really unique. Thank you to Netgalley and to Kensington Books for an eArc in exchange for my honest review.

​xo Marian