📚🔍 Lauren Carr's Readathon #macfaraday series

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Candidate for Murder

5+ 🐕 THIS volume!!! For those who have no passion for Gnarly because he sometimes makes a few sandwiches or wedding rings disappear... this is the volume we get HIS flashback.

❤️Why i love Gnarly so much when he's naughty? It could be a dog or a spoiled child, it's the love the author has for her dog that gets through her words in this series, with humor. That kind of love makes us forgive naughty actions and love him to dearh.

🧡Note: Gnarly the dog in this series and inspired by the author's dog ( passed away.)

Here is my 5 + all the stars in the sky for this one

We get Gnarly's full history.

It's canine Bonnie and Clyde 

Fash back to war when Gnarly lost his handler and was accused of killing her. This rumor will make Mac want to take over the world (after he deals with a life-threatening health episode)

Mac and Archie are away on a river cruise so David is left with Gnarly. At the same time it's Mayor election time for the small town, but both candidates are selfish, terrible and only care for their very extreme agendas.

Dallas who is a very attractive journalist and David's love is already looking into a crime that happened 20 years ago that will make a difference in the present.

After meeting both candidates, David decides to register Gnarly for Mayor and ( he has my vote) ahah and everyone else's apparently.

David wanted to make a point to show the two candidates that they're so terrible that even a cleptomaniac dog is a safer, better & loyal choice. The community just runs with it. And he is really winning so the candidates dig up past offenses.

Then one of the candidates is murdered and again they're pointing fingers at Gnarly. No way "Buttercup", Mac, Murphy and Jessica and all the community have his back, including Gnarly's campaign manager, who makes the best TV ads.

"Don't give a paws..." 

He has a campaign manager 

Someone with loyalty embedded in his DNA 

Is he more left or right? Ahahah

His pensive photo, ahahah Mac: do you know he's a dog..?

The mystery cases were very well written I'm so happy that closer to the end of this series we get amazing cases still with great pacing and resolution.

Crimes Past

5 stars

Not all wedding stories in this series end well, some don't even start (I'm looking at you, David!) Kidding. This has such a sad beginning with a flashback to a wedding of a police couple with officers in the building, and they both end up dead. One of Mac's cold cases that still haunts him, so he offers the child from the past, to whom he promised to catch the murderer, a 5-star unforgettable wedding. As always this author is never satisfied in giving us 1 case, in one book with get about 3 books in one, 3 deaths, a wedding, and the success of Gnarly's book release filled with wisdom, that even Mac read. Eheheh. There is also a case with cats.

Ok. Big news and big twist, if you've been following this series this volume is a core one when it comes to family/Spencer/community lore. You... have... to... meet... Gabriel.

I'm not a 100% fan of David's actions I am totally Team Mac, but Gabriel had me laughing out loud.

The author gives us great mystery cases, more than one, cold case, humor, blunt dark themes when it comes to murder scenes, lots of red herrings (I didn't guess a single thing in this one, and sometimes neither did the characters).

Shadow Murder

3.5 Stars 🌟

This was a strange one, because the main characters and POVs are new characters. I would say this is a companion to the series rather than vol. 14, and I appreciate the author's choices. The author has many characters with different beliefs and to avoid making Mac, Archie or David judge others she brought other characters to address a different set of themes. While the Murder at Astaire Castle was a Halloween-ish haunting with pagan elements, and the Canceled Vows was more of a Christian-pleasing, this one brings a mix of the two, giving us, not werewolves but angels & demons, summoning dark forces, great for fans of Arturo Pérez-Reverte and Dan Brown. Although this was not at the top of my fav ones, the author always includes in one story information on the characters and their lives, while they are solving a crime.

I liked that it has been a year and some, David is married to Gabriel's mom and they're having a baby.

I'm now ready to jump into the last one, which I got an arc thank you so much. This has been a great July and August Readathon of Mac Faraday one per week.

Releases October 2026