Steamy Espresso Secrets

Steamy Espresso Secrets (2025) Tyora Moody (Joss Miller #4)

Joss is starting the first Media Arts summer camp at the Rebecca Montgomery Art Center, and although overwhelmed, she is excited–and not just because she is teaching a day on podcasting.

But the man who volunteered to teach a day of photography to the kids seems a little off to her, and she’s not sure why.

When Lens was alive, Devante looked down on Lens’s form of photography. To me, Lens created art. Devante is more into what he can get paid for.

I had to give Devante credit. He was a natural with the children and didn’t seem to mind responding to zillions of questions.

Especially when his “assistant” doesn’t help much, and then asks Joss to look into the death of her brother for a new season of Joss’s podcast.

To add more confusion to her life, Nate, her brother, is in town and she is starting to learn about the man who all but disappeared from her life after the death of their father.

Nate answered, “When I left here after Dad died, I enlisted in the Army.”

I choked out, “Army? You were in the Army and we didn’t even know?” My brother really lived this whole life away from here, away from us.

I enjoyed the story, however there two things I had issues with, the second of which is definitely a me thing.

The first, is that I really really wanted the influencer to have been the killer. She was rude, demanding, entitled, and pretty much what I would expect an influencer to be.

The second, which is a me thing, is related to the religious underpinning of the story. I truly don’t have a problem with the strong Christian themes–especially since Joss comes across as a genuinely good person who lives the ideals of Christianity, instead of judging and looking down upon those who don’t believe the same as her.

But.

The idea of praying for divine intervention is something I have serious problems with. Without going into detail, divine intersession bothers me because I feel it contradicts the concept of free will, and secondly because of the capriciousness of whether God chooses to act.

A better explanation is this quote from Babylon 5.

I used to think it was awful that life was so unfair. Then I thought, ‘wouldn’t it be much worse if life were fair, and all the terrible things that happen to us come because we actually deserve them?’ So now I take great comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the universe.

That is entirely a me thing, but it’s something that bothers me whether I come across it in fiction or in real life.

Characters: Joss Miller, Detective Andre Baez, Nathan David Miller, Clarice Miller, Maya McAbee, Jerome ‘Lens’ McAbee, Devante Cavanaugh, Ace Clark, Tre Kennedy, Zara, Detective Sarah Wilkes, Detective Grayson Beckett, Detective Amos Jones, Detective Chris Black, Kisha Black, Leesa Patterson-Black, Eugeena Patterson-Jones, Amani Gladstone, Fay Everett, Hailey Ramsey, Rosemary Gladstone, Claude McKnight, Malik Porter, Zara Cavanaugh, Ruth and Thelma, Jonathan and Catherine Caldwell, Eleanor Olsen, Joe Phillips, Lily Hartman, Anita Stewart, Kia Winters, Leesa, Carmen Patterson, Cassandra

Cover by TywebbinCreations

Publisher: Tymm Publishing

Rating: 6/10

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