Note: Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the advanced reader copy of this book. This review will also be posted on NetGalley. What follows is my unbiased review of the book.

I was intrigued by a title that promised to introduce me to five writers I’d never read before. I’d seen these samplers available before on NetGalley and thought I would enjoy testing them out. Realistically, I’d rather read the books themselves than this sampler. The book comes in at just 203 pages, which means each book gets about 40 pages to whet the appetite.

He’s To Die For is a police procedural about a gay NYC detective. It has potential. Savvy Summers and Sweet Potato Crimes tackles a mystery in Chicago. The sampler here never actually established that the one character was murdered, but I’m pretty sure it was headed in that direction, with the impetus on the female lead character to solve it. Shaw Connelly Lives to Tell has a female protagonist trying to solve her sister’s disappearance. Out of the five samples, this was the one I felt I would be most likely to buy. The Witch’s Orchard takes place in the mountains of North Carolina as the protagonist takes a new look at a decades-old case of three missing young girls. Finally, The Marigold Cottages Murder Collective is a cozy mystery where a group of tenants rally to save their landlady.

The only one I felt was shortchanged was Savvy Summers and Sweet Potato Crimes. It isn’t established that the one character was murdered by the time I finished the sampler. Reading the blurb, of course, that’s it, but it isn’t obvious at this point, nor did it rope me in. The other four were good samples, and I could see finishing any of them.

These samplers can be purchased, but I would much rather just pick one of the books and go with it than buy the sampler and then decide to buy one or more of the books. If you have Kindle Unlimited, this is available for free, and I think it’s worth it to invest some time in that way to see if you’d like any or all of these stories.