This is the third romantic mystery in the Bath and Body mystery series, and after having gobbled up all three in one week, I hate to wait months for another one.

Persia Vanderbilt mixes personal scents for Venus Envy, the beauty spa she co-owns with her Aunt Florence. Persia has her hands full being stalked by an ex-boyfriend – a convicted embezzler now out on parole – a busy holiday season, and a make up artist who goes missing.

As Persia tries to cope with the holiday rush, she finds herself dragged into the search for the missing Lisa, whose sister is dating Persia’s friend Kyle. Kyle is also the Chief of Police and he has a history with Persia. Since Lisa’s car is found at the beach, Kyle is pretty sure she drowned while out for a walk. Her sister Amy and Persia assure him that Lisa had hydrophobia, which Persia was slowly helping her deal with, and would never have willing gone out onto the pier.

As if trying to help find Lisa isn’t challenging enough, ex-boyfriend Elliot ups the level of harassment to breaking shop windows and carrying a gun. Kyle tells her to record each incident and he will try to help her get a restraining order against him. Unfortunately, after Elliot breaks the shop’s windows, Persia, a martial arts expert, goes ape and breaks Elliot’s nose – which was very satisfying for the reader – but lands her in jail for assault.

I really like Persia a lot; she is an interesting contrast of an independent woman, afraid to commit and a completely competent person. In fact, it is her being both competent and impetuous that often lands her in trouble – but, fortunately, she never strays into the TSTL level.

Persia also has an active and enjoyable sex life, which is not dealt with in graphic detail, but she thoroughly enjoyed her relationships with the gorgeous Bran (in the first two books) and now Killian. In fact, it is Persia’s active sex life and emotional distancing from the men in her life that keeps me from giving this book a DIK. I hope that in future books, Persia will have her emotions involved when she makes love, for her fear of commitment is jarring as it doesn’t fit with the love and concern she shows to others in her life. She does show signs of coming out of the emotional deep freeze that she had been in throughout the first three books, which will make her a more completely rounded character.

There is an element of the paranormal in this series: Bran is a shaman with psychic abilities who also “cleanses” buildings of unhappy auras. The paranormal element is enjoyable as the author doesn’t spend pages trying to set up or explain these abilities, they are just accepted as a given.

I look forward to the next books in the series and I enjoyed these so much, I am now reading the author’s China and Chintz series written under her own name of Yasmin Galenorn.