Review: A Fool & His Monet by Sandra Orchard

Series: Serena Jones Mystery #1
Genre: Mystery/Suspense
Publisher: Revell
Released: Feb. 23, 2016
336 pages

About the Book:

Serena Jones has a passion for recovering lost and stolen art--one that's surpassed only by her zeal to uncover the truth about the art thief who murdered her grandfather. She's joined the FBI Art Crime Team with the secret hope that one of her cases will lead to his killer. Now, despite her mother's pleas to do something safer--like get married--Serena's learning how to go undercover to catch thieves and black market traders.

When a local museum discovers an irreplaceable Monet missing, Jones leaps into action. The clues point in different directions, and her boss orders her to cease investigating her most promising suspect. But determined to solve the case and perhaps discover another clue in her grandfather's murder, she pushes ahead, regardless of the danger.

  

My Rating & Thoughts:    ⭐⭐⭐

This is book one of the series and introduces us to Serena Jones, an FBI agent, and a whole cast of characters which includes her FBI partner, her landlord and her family. Story is mainly told from Serena’s point of view but every once in a while it switches to one of the two guy characters who are the possible love interests of Serena. Serena is an FBI agent in the art department and her specialty is investigating art theft or cases involving art. She gets called to a museum about a robbery that has happened, a close friend is the security officer there and they want to keep knowledge of the robbery to a minimum because it is suspected to be an inside job. They try to figure out what's going on and it kind of goes from there. I didn’t really care much about the mystery but I liked the characters. Serena's parents are British along with the rest of the family they came to America from England and have carried on some very English traditions. There is some prominent British terminology, food and traditions that are mentioned in the book and reminded me of my childhood as my parents are British. At times it felt like Serena was an amateur sleuth not an FBI agent, some of the things she did had me question her training, but I had to remind myself that she's only been an agent for less than two years. It reminded me quite a bit of other books where somebody kind of stumbles into a case and begins investigating on their own, but it is not their job. Her aunt was hilarious and every time she came on the scene, said something or tried to get involved in the case she had me laughing. 

(I purchased my copy of this book; opinions expressed 

in this review are my honest opinion and completely my own.)