Abandoned by Booklikes

Last book for Halloween bingo. Not much to say except that this book ended up aggravating me the whole time. The lead in the book, Maura, is nasty to pretty much everyone and sits around judging how small town the village of Leap is and how one of the villagers, a teenager named Rose, needs to do more with her life instead of working in a pub. Throw in a mystery of a young man who seems out to get Maura for no good reason and a body found in a bog, I was just ready to be done with this one. The book felt endless after a while and reading about cleaning, clothes, tea making, and other things in this book just made the overall flow painful. This is the first book in a series I have no intention of continuing. 

"Buried in a Bog" follows 25 year old Maura Donovan who returns to Ireland following the wish of her recently deceased grandmother. Maura was born and raised in Boston and after her grandmother's passing realizes she doesn't have anything going on in her own life. She plans on traveling to the village of Leap for just a week to honor her grandmother and return home. Instead, Maura ends up meeting a lot of people who tell her stories of her grandmother, her grandfather, and even her deceased father. She starts working in a local pub and wonders if she should stay. If that's not enough a dead body is found in a bog that may have some connections to those who live nearby. On top of that a mysterious young man seems hellbent on stalking and trying to scare Maura for some reason unknown to her.

So Maura was a piece of work. She herself didn't go to college and is working at bars in Boston, but she sure had time enough to look down upon everyone she meets. She doesn't like the fact that a young man near her age, Mick, is just working at the pub. She wonders why he hasn't moved away and even when he tells her he is there for his grandmother and to keep an eye on her she acts like people don't sometimes delays things to take care of elderly relatives. Maura has the same opinion about a teenager named Rose who has gotten her Leaving Certificate but has no interest in moving away and doing anything else. The character started to put my nose out of joint but it got worse when there's a throwaway line that Maura has about at least the Irish are better than how Americans act since they (Americans) just expect jobs to be given to them by the government along with money.

Moving on. Can't say much about the other characters because except for two of them, Maura is sitting around judging everyone. When she starts getting stalked how she talks to the police in Leap would have had her cursed out if she was a woman of color.

The writing was painful after a while. Connolly stays focused too much on describing every freaking thing that is happening and what Maura is eating, smelling, seeing. Everything became tedious after a while. Also she keeps going on and on about how she needs to get clothes and or wash the clothes she brought for a really long time. I think that's what I should have called the title of this review, "Everything Goes On For A Really Long Time." The flow was awful.

The setting of Leap could have worked if I didn't want to bludgeon the lead. 

The ending was a big whatever to me. It made zero freaking sense, but it's a way to keep the character there for the series. This is the second cozy mystery series of Connolly I have read and I swear she must say to herself that cozy mysteries equal unlikable female character cause she did the same thing in her Orchard series which caused me to stop reading that one after a while too.