Title: Tiara Trouble
Author: Lane Buckman
Genre/Audience: Cozy mystery, adult
Publication: Cozy Cat Press, 2013
Source: For review, CLP Tours
This book was a riot! Destinee Faith Miller, a Southern girl, is no stranger to beauty pageants. She’s won too many titles to count and is a bit of a local celebrity around town. After losing Miss American Universe over a question about Libya, she heads back home to start her own pageant consulting business, Destinee’s Dolls. She prepares young girls for pageants and is very successful. When a good friend, who was also the emcee for a local pageant, dies, Destinee is asked to step in and emcee in his place. She is incredibly excited about the opportunity, despite the tragic loss, until the pageant judges start getting killed off one by one. She has to wonder if she’s next, and, more importantly, if the pageant will be canceled, all the while trying to unwind the mystery of the killings.
This book was incredibly fun and humorous. Destinee is a hilarious but lovable heroine with huge hair, a vast walk in closet, and an incredible amount of pageant wins. Her life revolves around pageants and pampering and she’s pretty full of herself. Despite that, you can’t help but love her because she’s kind of naive about the rest of the world. Some of you may know that I absolutely love all things Southern, so this book was a treat to read for the setting and Southern talk alone, but it was also a fun story, engaging mystery, and had me laughing quite a bit. It was also interesting to see inside the life of those strange child pageants and the scary pageant moms like you see on TV. Yikes!
I love cozy mysteries, and this one did not disappoint. I’d highly recommend this one to fans of cozies, Southern settings, and good, light fun reads! I hope there’s a sequel and the sooner the better! 
My Rating: 4/5
