Queen of All She Reads: Virtual Tour & #Giveaway for Deady Dye and a Soy Chai by Elizabeth Ashby & Traci Andrighetti

Welcome to my stop on the Virtual Book Tour, presented by Great Escapes Virtual Book Tours, for Deadly Dye and a Soy Chai by Elizabeth Ashley and Traci Andrighetti. Please leave a comment or question for Traci to let her know you stopped by. You can enter her tour wide giveaway, where Traci will award a Kate Spade “Cobble Hill Bow Stacy" wallet in blue pebbled leather to a randomly drawn commenter, by filling out the Rafflecopter form below. You can also enter the 2nd giveaway, for this stop only, for one digital copy of Traci’s Deadly Dye and a Soy Chai ebook by filling out the 2nd Rafflecopter form. You can follow all of the stops on his tour by clicking on the banner above. The more stops you visit, the better your odds of winning.

Profile on Cassidi Lee Conti By Traci Andrighetti

Since I’m doing five guest posts for the DEADLY DYE AND A SOY CHAI blog tour, I thought it would be fun to do a profile on the five main characters in the series. Of course, I’m starting with the leading lady, Cassidi Conti, a blonde-haired, brown-eyed hair stylist who left Texas for Danger Cove, Washington, to start a new life.

Occupation: Cassidi is the owner of The Clip and Sip Hair Salon located at 627 Fletcher Way. The salon is in an old Victorian mansion where Cassidi also resides. She inherited the salon from her late Uncle Vincent “Vinnie” Conti, who died under mysterious (and unmentionable) circumstances. Speaking of unmentionables, The Clip and Sip was a famous brothel during the gold rush, a fact which comes back to haunt Cassidi in sinsational ways.

Education: At 26 years of age, she’s still working on it! Her plan is to get a degree in Business Administration, but school isn’t exactly her strong suit (and neither is geography. When she moved to Washington, she thought it was next to California, not Oregon).

Personality: Cassidi is hardworking, driven, straightforward, and romantic (but not when she’s tracking down a murderer).

Bad Habits: More often than not, she drinks too much espresso and sticks her nose into homicide investigations instead of leaving them to the Danger Cove PD to solve.

Favorite Foods: Her absolute faves are things you can’t find in Danger Cove: barbeque, Tex Mex, Blue Bell ice cream, and anything made with peaches from her hometown of Fredericksburg (especially peach brown betty and peach praline pie).

Main Challenges Cassidi Is Facing Now (in no particular order):

1. Keeping The Clip and Sip afloat (she recently added a free drink to the salon’s services to bring in new clients).

2. Passing her accounting class so that she can stay in school.

3. Managing the antics of her ex-barista-turned-make-up-artist step cousin from New Jersey, Gia Di Mitri.

4. Staving off the attention of sexy boat salesman and aspiring yacht designer Zac Taylor.

5. Solving the year-old mystery of who murdered her Uncle Vinnie.

6. Staying out of jail.

7. Finding out who killed 80-year-old Margaret Appleby in The Clip and Sip and why she turned as blue as her hair dye.

Defense Mechanism: Hiking up her skirt and running—like she did from her own wedding to Shane Austin back in Texas. But that’s another story…

Deadly Dye and a Soy Chai

By Elizabeth Ashby & Traci Andrighetti

Danger Cove Mysteries, Book 5

Publisher: Gemma Halliday Publishing

Release Date: July 15, 2015

Genre: Cozy Mystery

Length: 211 Pages (2413KB)

Format: eBook/Print

ISBN: 978-1515110392

ASIN: B011SBZ310

Buy Links: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | iTunes | Kobo | Smashwords

Native Texan Cassidi Conti was expecting to face some obstacles when she moved to Danger Cove and opened The Clip and Sip, a hair salon that gives away free drinks. What she wasn’t counting on was a client dying during a dye job. But when eighty-year-old Margaret Appleby comes in for her biweekly appointment, that’s exactly what happens: Margaret drinks her usual soy chai, dozes off under the dryer…and doesn’t wake up.

Now The Clip and Sip is under suspicion, clients are wary, and Cassidi is on a mission to prove that while her styles may be killer, her employees are innocent! But as Cassidi wades through the myriad of suspects in the small, costal town, the killer sets his sights straight on everyone’s favorite stylist. If Cassidi doesn’t watch her back, she may just end up Danger Cove’s latest fashionable victim.

**********

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Traci Andrighetti is the national bestselling author of the Franki Amato mysteries and the Danger Cove Hair Salon mysteries. In her previous life, she was an award-winning literary translator and a Lecturer of Italian at the University of Texas at Austin, where she earned a PhD in Applied Linguistics. But then she got wise and ditched that academic stuff for a life of crime–writing, that is.

Author Links

Website: http://traciandrighetti.com

Blog; http://traciandrighetti.com/blo/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/traciandrighettiauthor

Twitter: https://twitter.com/TAndrighetti

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7383577.Traci_Andrighetti

A hair stylist jumping at a chance to start again gets more than she bargained for in Traci Andrighetti’s Deady Dye and a Soy Chai, the fifth book in the Danger Cove Mystery series. Colorful characters, two mysteries and a heroine determined to clear her family’s name take center stage and never let go. A light touch of humor, sharp dialogue and plenty of twists and turns kept my attention from start to finish. If you’re a fan of cozy mysteries, this is a book you will undoubtedly enjoy.

Ms. Andrighetti does a good job introducing us to Cassidi Conti, a blonde half-Italian hairdresser who jumps at the chance to leave Fredericksburg, TX and start “over” in a new town when she inherits her uncle Vinnie’s estate. An estate consisting of an old Victorian mansion with a built in hair salon in Danger Cove, Washington, a black Ferrari California and a small bank account, oh, and the problem of Vinnie’s unsolved murder. I easily connected with Cassidi, a woman who runs from her problems if she can and chugs espresso like water, and laughed out loud at the situations she gets herself into. Situations that begin on the first page.

The secondary characters are also well developed and I especially fell in love with Gia di Mitri, Cassidi’s step-cousin and the salon’s “makeup” stylist, and Amy Spannagel, the town’s librarian and Cassidi’s new best friend, both women were hilarious in their own way and the way they interacted with Cassidi made me laugh. Their turn as secret private investigators also cracked me up and even though they are mostly clueless, they did manage to conduct a decent investigation into who killed one of salon’s clients while she was getting her hair dyed.

I also enjoyed getting to meet Zac Taylor, a boatyard worker who has a crush on Cassidi and is determined to take their acquaintance relationship to a more personal level. Ms. Andrighetti does a pretty good job developing the potential chemistry between Zac and Cassidi and it’s only Cassidi’s past and her determination to stay away from romance that keep Zac at arm’s length. The mystery is well written and takes plenty of twists and turns. The story is well paced and Ms. Andrighetti’s writing style is easy to follow and her voice as an author is very enjoyable.

Will Cassidi discover who killed the client sitting at the Clip and Sip Salon? Will she discover more of her uncle’s secrets and find out who wanted him dead? You’ll have to read Deadly Dye and a Soy Chai to find out, I enjoyed it and look forward to reading more of the Danger Cove Mystery series to find out more about the small town and the inhabitants Cassidi will no doubt encounter in future books.

My Rating: 4.5 out of 5 Crowns