Nothing surprises me in Bright Seas.

Richard McDuff's dream had been to open Bright Treasures, an Antiques and Edibles shop in small town Bright Seas, where he'd grown up. He' d spent months collecting items for sale and he'd leased a shop for three years. Then he died. Sixteen months later his wife was still desperately missing him and unsure what to do. But with a year's lease left on the premises, she decided to go ahead in honour of her husband. With the help of her elderly but vivacious and cooking loving landlady, the business becomes an instant success, and Angelique herself draws the attention of newly returned home lawyer, Jack, who had also been Richard's best friend.

So far, so good. Interesting characters (although it does seem that everyone is a bit batty, mostly elderly, and all related to one or other of two families) and with the potential for - well, almost anything from romance to mystery. However, it seems that the young window's dog has better instincts than most of the inhabitants although it takes intervention from above to get ex wife and best friend determined that someone.murdered her busband. Ho hum, only a year or so late. It all turns into a bit of a farce, then, though there is a brief period of tension build up towards the end as the actions, with timings, of various townspeople are spliced together prior to a final denouement.
Narrator Lisa Leslie is excellent, reading with clarity and good intonation. Her voicing of the disparate protagonists is individual and interesting.so that each is separately identifiable, and the text well performed without being overdramatic, thank goodness.

This reader is not averse to the paranormal, nor divine intervention, or reincarnation, etcetera, but some of the content of this book just seemed daft, I'm afraid, though good for a laugh at times (exchanging text messages with a dead relative, for example). I was fortunate in being freely gifted a complimentary copy of Bright Treasures, at my request, by the rights holder, via Audiobook Boom. Thank you. Although the characters were delightfully eccentric and well developed, the main storyline mystery was poorly conceived: a great pity. But perhaps now that this first book has been sritten, introducing the strange little town of Bright Seas, author Annie Acorn can continue to expand on the daily lives of these deliciously bizarre but very real people and find a decent mystery to focus the attention of the inhabitants. Yes, including the dog.

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