Freya, Aunt Carole and friends return in this third book in the Antique Hunter’s Guide series. This time, Freya and Aunt Carole rush to the Scottish Borders to a remote castle, the last known location of a member of the Lockwood Antique Hunter’s Agency, Bella, who was investigating a forger before disappearing. Here, they find a body in the vegetable garden and a robbery, but where is their friend? Can they solve the mystery in time to find her, and solve the latest clue in Arthur’s journal?

This book is the third in the series. I reviewed the first one HERE and the second one HERE. CL Miller is the daughter of parents who dealt in antiques and whose guides on them have been a beloved resource for years. The book is written in first person for Freya and third for other characters or parts of the story, which personally I don’t love, but it doesn’t detract from the story here.

I think this series is pretty fun overall. It’s a little more like a thriller series than a mystery series. The gang are chasing down clues to forgeries and thefts that are recorded cryptically in the previous Antique shop owners journal. Arthur was a lovely man, who helped raise Freya until his criminal activities caught up with him and left them estranged. A lot of the character arcs involve forgiveness and finding new trust and belonging. Found family. And the plots involve international intrigue around smuggling and forgeries, though there is always a murder or two as well. This international crime ring and some of the plot points make me feel like these are more cozy thriller than mystery. The stories involve adventure and finding how things fit into a wider crime ring, rather than being smaller, investigative stories that involve clues and lots of suspects, for example. They’re thrillers in Golden Age detective fiction styling.

I love the castle location for this one. The stories involve different fun locations, last time a cruise ship in the Red Sea, and I like this little bit of escapism. In this one, there’s also a storm looming towards the end of the book that adds atmosphere and tension. I think you could read this book as a standalone if you wanted to, but the plot threads of Freya’s love interest and Bella’s personal journey will mean a bit less if you didn’t read the last book.

I like Phil the FBI Agent, who is drawn into this case. He’s kind of straight laced and I think he works well as a solid love interest for shy and retiring Freya. I did find her resistance to falling for him, because he’s a client, was a bit weak. There’s no real reason for her not to get involved with him, and it feels a little like trying to make it a will-they-won’t-they plot unnecessarily. I would think the distance between the US and the UK would be a bigger deterent. But I do like them both as characters.

Aunt Carole and the other side characters are always fun. Here we get a little more of Bella’s thoughts and feelings, which I think detracts from her character slightly. She’s cool, calm, collected and a bit criminal, but was a friend of Arthur’s and has her own agenda. In this book, her confidence and coolness is undermined a little by her being written as having daddy issues which drive her independence. I rather liked that she was a strong, confident and uncontrollable, morally grey woman. I liked her growing friendship with the main characters and their stories, but I don’t think we needed a tragic trauma backstory to make her make sense. She was a raconteur, and now she’s not.

This one felt a little slower to me than the other two in the series, but I still liked it. The complicated family dynamics of the castle and the people who live there was convoluted in a really fun way and the whole didn’t feel predictable. I liked the location and the hints from Arthur’s journals worked in. Aunt Carole got to get up to some mischief, which I always love to see. She’s such a fun foil to the more staid and cautious Freya. All the elements are here for another fun entry in this series, and I’m going to be looking out for the next book when it comes out.

Read It If: you love you British mystery series and Antiques Road Show. This is another good entry in a pleasing series. A little slow at times, but still very enjoyable.

Thank you to Simon & Schuster Canada for the ARC of this book for review.