The concept of Bean in Love's story is solid and I could see myself really loving it except for me there were a few major flaws. Primarily, the fact that this was a 9+ hr long episode of Murder, She Wrote if we lived inside Jessica (Angela Lansbury's) head ruminating for 7 of those hours. There's character development and then there's writing a book as if it were the character's diary. There's far more background than necessary to complete the actual plot, plus a decent chunk of it was repeated multiple times. 

My other major issue is that mysteries are far more enjoyable when you have a chance at guessing the solution. As far as I could tell, major pieces that were revealed within the second to last chapter were never even hinted at previously and the entire solution was laid out for us very quickly all at once, there was no gradual revealing of facts as they were discovered as even the main character learned 90% of it at the end. 

Combined, these elements basically made Bean in Love long and boring. I'm still rating it a 2.5-3 star because the concept was decent and the characters were likeable.

I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.