No Charm Intended

No Charm Intended by Mollie Cox Bryan is the second book in A Cora Crafts Mystery series. Cora Chevalier is getting ready for her four day “wildcrafting” retreat at Kildare House in Indigo Gap, North Carolina. She checks her phone and discovers a message stating “I kidnapped her”. Believing it to be a prank, Cora ignores it. Just as Cora, Jane and the retreat instructors are leaving for dinner, Officer Glass arrives to discuss Cora’s text message. It seems that Cora was not the only person to receive it. It turns out that Gracie Wyck, a nanny and babysitter, is missing (they suspect kidnapped). Later that evening, Cora and Jane receive a visit from Gracie’s boyfriend, Paul and his friend, Henry. They are trying to retrace Gracie’s footsteps in an attempt to locate her. The next day Paul’s friend, Henry is missing. Cora fears Paul could be next and offers him a place to stay. When Henry turns up dead, and Paul becomes a person of interest. Cora believes Paul to be innocent and starts investigating to prove it. It turns out that Paul, Gracie and Henry were all playing the same computer game. Did someone decide to change the rules of the game? Can Cora and friends find Gracie in time? No Charm Intended was not as enchanting as I was hoping. I enjoy crafting and love to read cozy mysteries, so No Charm Intended seemed like a perfect match for me. I did like the various crafts mentioned in the book, and I was glad instructions were provided at the end of the book on some of them. However, I found the mystery uncomplicated and easily solved early in the book. Some information was repeated frequently throughout the story (like the author needed filler). No Charm Intended can be read alone. The author provided the background details on the main character and summarized what occurred in the first book in this series. I did appreciate how the author included characters from her A Cumberland Creek Mystery series. I give No Charm Intended 2 out of 5 stars. I found a few items in the story hard to believe. Cora letting Paul stay in the house with the retreat guests (and he is a murder suspect). If I was a guest, this would make me uncomfortable. Jane talks about Gracie’s kidnapping in front of her five-year-old daughter, London (more than once). London then makes herself ill and begins having nightmares because she is scared. I was surprised by how the issue of depression was portrayed in No Charm Intended. Mollie Cox Bryan made it sound like a mental illness and people with the disease are unreliable (crazy, unbalanced). Jane becomes worried that harm could have come to her daughter because the babysitter suffered from depression. She felt she should have been warned (because she would not have hired the woman). Depression comes in many forms (including hereditary) and can easily be managed with medication. Most of the book is written in the third person, but Jane’s sections were in the first person. I did not enjoy reading Jane’s segments and quickly tried of her issues (regarding her ex-husband in particular). Jane is my least favorite person among the main characters. I am not sure I can continue with A Cora Crafts Mystery series.