(The First Wine Lover's Mystery)
By
Michele Scott
By
Michele Scott
From the Back Cover
"Nikki Sands was like every other aspiring actress - waiting tables between jobs. But Nikki has taken serving wines to heart. She knew enough to impress Napa Valley's golden boy, Derek Malveaux, who offered a job at his vineyard."
In the beginning of the story, Nikki serves drinks to "the Bimbo" and "Casanova". The bimbo manages to get Nikki fired and Casanova comes to her defense. Casanova turns out to be Derek Malveaux of the Malveaux Estates Winery in Napa Valley. Impressed by her knowledge about wine, he offers her a position as sales manager and personal assistant.
From the moment Nikki arrives on the estate, mysteries surround her from the death of the estates top winemaker to discovering someone is skimming profits. Nikki takes the sleuthing skills she learned from her failed acting gig as a police detective and tries to solve the case.
I wasn't too particularly thrilled with the story. It seemed to be lacking something and reminded me of Murder She Wrote for some reason. Some of the writing was hokey and cliched. I wasn't able to suspend disbelieve and get absorbed into the story. I kept thinking "now why is she doing that or how silly can you be." I will probably check out a couple more of the stories in the series simply because this is the first book Michele wrote. And being an amateur writer myself (cough cough - ahem) with experience comes improvement. I have come across several best selling authors whose first attempts left something to be desired and they definitely improved with each book.
"Nikki Sands was like every other aspiring actress - waiting tables between jobs. But Nikki has taken serving wines to heart. She knew enough to impress Napa Valley's golden boy, Derek Malveaux, who offered a job at his vineyard."
In the beginning of the story, Nikki serves drinks to "the Bimbo" and "Casanova". The bimbo manages to get Nikki fired and Casanova comes to her defense. Casanova turns out to be Derek Malveaux of the Malveaux Estates Winery in Napa Valley. Impressed by her knowledge about wine, he offers her a position as sales manager and personal assistant.
From the moment Nikki arrives on the estate, mysteries surround her from the death of the estates top winemaker to discovering someone is skimming profits. Nikki takes the sleuthing skills she learned from her failed acting gig as a police detective and tries to solve the case.
I wasn't too particularly thrilled with the story. It seemed to be lacking something and reminded me of Murder She Wrote for some reason. Some of the writing was hokey and cliched. I wasn't able to suspend disbelieve and get absorbed into the story. I kept thinking "now why is she doing that or how silly can you be." I will probably check out a couple more of the stories in the series simply because this is the first book Michele wrote. And being an amateur writer myself (cough cough - ahem) with experience comes improvement. I have come across several best selling authors whose first attempts left something to be desired and they definitely improved with each book.
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