The Broken Spine by Dorothy St. James is the first book in the Beloved Bookworm series. It is currently scheduled for release on January 19 2021.
Trudell Becket, known to her friends as Tru, finds herself in a bind when her library in lovely Cypress, South Carolina, is turned into a state-of-the-art bookless “technological center.” A library with no books breaks Tru’s book-loving heart so she decides to rescue hundreds of beloved tomes slated for the town dump. Under the cover of darkness, Tru, along with her best friends—coffee shop owner Tori Green and mysterious bestselling author Flossie Finnegan-Baker—set up a secret bookroom in the library’s basement and prepare to open it to their most loyal, trustworthy patrons. But as Tru and her crew are putting the finishing touches on their new book room, the town manager, who was behind the big push for the library’s transformation, is crushed by an overturned shelf of DVDs. Tru becomes the prime suspect as she hadn’t hid the fact that she hated having all of those wonderful books replaced by tablets and computers. But if she gives the police her alibi, she’ll have to explain about the secret book room and risk losing the books. Tru knows she’s in a heap of trouble, and it doesn’t help that the officer in charge of the case is her old crush from high school, who broke her teenaged heart. To keep herself out of jail and her beloved bookroom up and running, Tru—with the help of Tori, Flossie, and a brown tabby stray cat named Dewey Decimal—decides to investigate. And faster than you can say “Shhhh!” Tru quickly finds herself on the same page with a killer who would love to write her final chapter.
The Broken Spine is a book that I had a little trouble with to start. The way librarians were discussed in the beginning left me with a bad taste in my mouth, and I almost set the book aside. However, I stuck with it and the book did get better and I tried to put that initial impression aside. I liked the character arch for Tru, although her role as the mousy librarian still irks me a bit, I do think that she came into herself by the end of the book. I thought the reveal of the secondary characters and the dynamics of the town was well done. I did think it was weird that the town's characters all knew each other, but then a number of police officers and other residents were strangers. My favorite part of the story was the cat, and some of the friendships that carried Tru through. The mystery was well layered and had plenty of twists and turns, and a good touch of danger. However, I do not think that I will continue reading this series.
The Broken Spine is a good mystery, and I liked the majority of the story.
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