The tenth installment in a charming cozy mystery series set on an island off the New England coast and featuring the cat cafe owner Maddie and her cat JJ.

Trouble is brewing on Daybreak Island…

Summer is in full swing on Daybreak Island, and JJ’s House of Purrs—and the new mobile cat café—have Maddie James running nonstop with on-site cat parties.

When her mom’s old best friend, back on the island for the first time since her aunt Delia vanished decades ago, asks Maddie to plan a birthday party for her granddaughter, Maddie happily agrees.

But when Maddie and her mom arrive at Delia’s old house, it’s empty—except for a white-and-gray cat that leads Maddie to a hidden room, where they find her mom’s friend dead.

Soon Maddie learns the cat might be tied to a ghostly island legend. And as she digs deeper, she realizes she’s unraveling two disappearances, forty years apart—while someone is desperate to keep the truth buried.

Maddie runs a cat café and party service. When she and her mother go to the McAllister’s home to discuss the details of a little girl’s birthday party they find Olivia McAllister dead. As the investigation ramps up it starts to look like Maddie’s mother is a suspect in her old friend’s death.

 The characters are interesting, the cats are a nice background and, of course, the Ghost Cat is intriguing. I came to the same conclusion about the murderer at just about the same time Maddie did and was fairly certain what Delia’s fate was but totally wrong about who that culprit was.

While this is the tenth entry in this series it is the first one I have read. The author does a good job of setting the scene and identifying all the characters while seamlessly blending it in to the ongoing story so while I had not read previous entries there was no point at which I felt lost in terms of the setting and characters.  I will be looking for the next entry as well as looking for the first nine books. Recommended ~~ Stephanie L Bannon