Dinked: Serenity Acres: Where Secrets Barely Stay Hidden
by Crystal Quast
About Dinked: Serenity Acres
Dinked: Serenity Acres: Where Secrets Barely Stay Hidden
Mystery
1st in Series
Setting – Serenity Acres in the town of Southpoint
Publisher : Crystal Quast (April 15, 2025)
Paperback : 254 pages
ISBN-10 : 1069383813
ISBN-13 : 978-1069383815
Digital ASIN : B0DZFCMVHL
If you love cozy mysteries, welcome to Serenity Acres in the town of Southpoint, where everyone is a hot mess with a secret to hide.
Dinked: Secrets of Serenity Acres, dives deep into the deadly tensions between pickleball and tennis players in the bucolic, ball-buster neighborhood. When Margot Fields tries to push through a plan to expand the local courts, secrets start to come to the surface and residents start to unravel. It’s a death match to the end, but who will come out unscathed in this fun, feisty thriller?
Dollycas’s Thoughts
Serenity Acres is a modern-day Peyton Place with everyone all up in everybody’s business with a side of pickleball. The tennis players are not happy sharing their courts, so Margot Fields comes up with a plan that would give tennis players and pickleball players their own courts, along with some other amenities. She just needs to get the project approved. Not everyone is on board, and the community starts to fall apart when secrets start to be revealed.
Will this project get off the ground? Or will Margot’s plan come to a screeching halt?
Cozy mysteries are my favorite genre, and they have a basic formula. This story follows a couple of the rules – it takes place in a small, close-knit community of Serenity Acres and has an interesting pickleball theme. The story contains humor in the right places. Everyone has secrets to investigate, but the murder doesn’t happen until late in the book. What takes it out of the cozy realm for me is the explicit language and adult scenes. In cozy mysteries, violence and sexual content take place off the page, making the story lighthearted and suitable for a larger audience. I have always felt that a cozy mystery needs to be written so that I could hand it to my grandmother and she could enjoy it as much as I did, and it wouldn’t make her blush or be upset. For these reasons, I would classify Dinked: Serenity Acres as a hard-boiled mystery, not a cozy mystery.
As a hard-boiled mystery, this story is an entertaining read full of colorful characters with secrets and ulterior motives. Margot has come up with a great plan that will benefit the community, but there is more to that story. Daphne is the long-standing president of the Serenity Acres Grounds Association, and she is against Margot’s plan, but has a hard time attending any of the meetings. Her life is in flux, and wine helps her get through the days and nights. Ilonka Voss is a heck of a pickleball player who hates to lose, but is a “steadfast guardian of tradition”. She, with Brock Chen, represented the broad divide in the community between those who “embrace progress and those who want things to stay the same”. Ilona and her husband, Gunther, have quite a history. That is just a small sampling of the well-crafted characters Ms. Quast has created. Every character in this story is hiding something, has a huge secret, or twists things up to create drama just for fun, and Margot is in the middle of it all.
Margot is being threatened and is trying to figure out who has it out for her. She really doesn’t know whom she can trust. The community comes together for events like Salsa Night and Courts Send-Off night. Margot does her best to keep her eyes and ears open to find out who is behind the threats. There are twists after twists, and each secret revealed turns the story in a different direction. Then something dreadful and heartwrenching happens, and there’s only one witness. A witness who cannot tell anyone what happened. I was greatly conflicted as I turned the final page.
Dinked: Serenity Acres is a bizarre story filled with off-beat characters brought together in a small town, where pickleball is the hottest craze. Peyton Place meets Desperate Housewives kind of on steroids. With ebbs and flows, drama, secrets, threats, embezzlement, murder, and more, this is an enjoyable read. This is Ms. Quast’s debut novel. I am intrigued to see what she writes next.
I voluntarily reviewed an Advance Reader Copy. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review. Thank you to the author for providing me with an ARC.
*Explicit scenes and language
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About Crystal Quast
With over twenty years of spinning stories in corporate communications, Dinked: Serenity Acres Where Secrets Barely Stay Hidden is Crystal Quast’s debut novel. When she’s not writing, C.A. loves playing pickleball and tennis, paddleboarding, hiking, and spending time with her family.
Author Links
Dinked: Serenity Acres on Facebook Dinked: Serenity Acres on Instagram Serenity Acres Secrets (Author website) My LinkedIn Profile My company – Bullseye Corporate
Purchase Links
Dinked Serenity Acres on Amazon
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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. Receiving a complimentary copy in no way reflected my review of this book. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.” “As an Amazon Associate, I earn a commission from qualifying purchases.” I am also an affiliate of Bookshop.org and I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.”