Juniper bean resorts to.., p.1
Juniper Bean Resorts to Murder: Special Edition, page 1
Second Edition Copyright © 2025 by Gracie Ruth Mitchell
First edition: 2023
Exclusive character art by Mary Watson
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
To those who fear that death is the end: the stars do not cease to exist when the sun rises, and we do not stop praising their light.
CONTENTS
About This Edition: or, In Which the Author Waxes Poetic and Long-Winded
Content Warning
1. In Which Juniper Defeats Inertia
2. In Which Aiden Lays Down the Rules
3. Thirteen Years Ago
4. In Which Juniper Decides Murder Might Be the Best Option
5. In Which Aiden Spots a Spud
6. In Which Juniper Ponders the Sexiness of Leaning
7. Twenty-One Years Ago
8. In Which Aiden and Juniper Find a Very Dead Body
9. In Which Aiden Regrets Saying Yes
10. In Which Juniper Makes a Phone Call
11. In Which Aiden Does Some Digging
12. In Which Juniper Adds to the Murder Board
13. In Which Juniper Makes a House Call
14. In Which Aiden Becomes Acquainted with Juniper’s Wandering Tongue
15. In Which Aiden Remembers
FROM JUNIPER’S DESK
FROM GRACIE’S DESK
16. In Which Juniper Meets the World’s Most Glorious Abs
17. In Which Aiden’s Heart Does Inconvenient Things
18. In Which Juniper Does Not Call Anyone Papa
19. In Which Aiden Ponders the Human Inclination for Warmth
20. In Which Juniper Refuses to Live in Fear
21. In Which Aiden Asks for Advice
22. In Which Juniper Finds the Fuchsia
23. In Which Aiden Finally Caves
24. In Which Aiden Tells the Truth
25. In Which Juniper Makes Another House Call
26. In Which Aiden Loses Shakespeare
Epilogue
Bonus Content: Aiden’s POV
Acknowledgments
Also by Gracie Ruth Mitchell
ABOUT THIS EDITION: OR, IN WHICH THE AUTHOR WAXES POETIC AND LONG-WINDED
When I had the idea to do a special edition of Juniper Bean Resorts to Murder a while back, I dismissed it at first. I don’t think every book needs a special edition, and although there was more about the story I could say, I wasn’t sure there was any need to.
But then I paid more attention. I saw one reader dress up as Juniper Bean for Halloween. Another reader named her dog Juniper Bean. And I realized that the amount of love you all inexplicably have for this wacky story of mine meant you would probably enjoy the extras—behind-the-scenes tidbits, bonus scenes, soundtrack suggestions, and character art. I had a cover I’d been holding onto for years, too, one that I knew would fit Juniper’s story perfectly.
So I decided to give it a try.
The earliest version of this story dated back to 2020, I think, and all I had was Aiden’s character. Even then he was a teacher, although I had him as a professor at that time. He showed up crystal clear in my mind from day one, and I knew him instantly. I imagined a scene of a student or past student giving him a love note or a Christmas present, and I imagined him rejecting her harshly. (If you’ve read the book before, you’ll probably remember that a version of this scene made its way into the final book as a flashback.)
Later on more characters came, and as sometimes happens with my process, I ended up assembling them into their own cast. The book wasn’t initially a murder mystery; I’d been itching to write a mystery, though, which made its way into the story of Juniper Bean—an author who couldn’t stop killing her characters. When I put the idea of a mystery author together with an actual murder mystery, this story (more or less in its final iteration) was born.
I worried for a long time before publication. The book was difficult to write, primarily because it was a new genre for me, and I knew it would need a lot of edits. I also worried because my readers were used to romantic comedy from me, not murder. Thankfully my audience was generally very receptive!
A bit about Juniper (and Gracie): I think there’s a bit of me in every character I write. It’s hard not to leave traces of myself. But Juniper is hands down the character who’s most similar to me. We share many qualities, but mostly we’re both a little quirky, a little awkward, a little stuck in our own heads. We both have things that try to weigh us down in our souls—mental illness in my case, deep trauma in Juniper’s. There are parts of both of us that can get a little dark sometimes, although my guess is that everyone is like that to some extent. Juniper has an interesting relationship with death; it’s very real and almost tangible to her. The ones around her who’ve passed are not gone in her mind. They’re just away for the moment, in the next room but still very present. And so she can’t help but remember those people.
Juniper stops by the bulletin board of missing persons in Walmart, and she looks every single one of them in the eye. She says their names. I do the same. Because in a world that casts people aside and forgets so easily, someone should remember. And I guess that’s one of the main themes of this story: Death, and our relationship with death, and honoring the memories of those we’ve lost. Deciding what to keep and what to let go of, how to move forward. I didn’t intend for the story to take that direction, but it did, and I couldn’t have stopped it if I’d tried.
This is, ultimately, Juniper’s story—and, in many ways, Nora’s. I hope I’ve told the story that needed to be told, and I hope I did it justice. I hope this special edition meets your expectations and enhances your reading experience! Thank you infinitely for coming along with me on this ride.
Love,
Gracie
P.S. One last tidbit because someone once asked: Aiden’s full name is Aiden Baxter Milano. Juniper doesn’t have a middle name; Nora couldn’t bring herself to give her one.
CONTENT WARNING
This is a murder mystery, so there are some darker elements to this story. Sexual assault of a side character is mentioned but is not shown on page or discussed in detail.
1
IN WHICH JUNIPER DEFEATS INERTIA
At some point I have to stop killing people.*
I can’t very well carry on like this. Here I am, backed into a corner yet again, with no conceivable way out—another body to bury, another alibi to invent, and absolutely no relevant knowledge to speak of. What’s the best way to dismember a corpse? Who knows. How long before a body starts to stink? Beats me. So why do I keep doing this to myself? And what does it say about me, anyway, that my main characters keep finding creative ways to die? This work in progress is supposed to be a romance novel. It should have swooning and longing, summer afternoons and strawberry sunsets and reckless love.
And to be fair, it does have all of those things—right up until my heroine gets poisoned by her friend-turned-lover.
So…her friend-turned-lover…turned-murderer? Is there a market for a romance novel where the female lead dies in chapter nine?
No. Probably not.*
This is better than the last manuscript I attempted, I guess, where the hero didn’t make it three chapters before revealing himself to be a villain who bludgeoned his personal trainer to death with a Shake Weight. That particular storyline was fueled heavily by caffeine and the discovery that I’d be unable to cancel my gym membership, since I (wildly optimistically) paid six months in advance.
Maybe I’m secretly a serial killer. Is that possible? Maybe I’m a serial killer, and this is my subconscious’s way of getting me to see the light. I figure I’d probably know if I were a mass murderer, and it probably would’ve manifested in other, less-benign ways—a Shake-Weight-bludgeoned body rotting in my garage, for instance—but then again, does anyone ever really know themselves?
No. I submit that they do not.
I certainly don’t. Just yesterday, for example, I would have sworn up and down that I’d never go on another date while living in this little Wyoming town. I’ve met too many man-children masquerading as adults to have any hope left for this particular dating pool.
And yet here I am, parked in the town’s fanciest coffee shop, waiting with my friend Matilda for her boyfriend and her boyfriend’s friend, so that we can double—something I only agreed to because I haven’t seen Matilda in months. We keep in touch, but after we graduated college seven years ago, she moved to the city and got a real big-girl job in a legal office.
I, meanwhile, stayed in our little college town, partly because my brother was attending school here too, and he’s some of the only family I’ve got left. Now that he’s graduated, we rent an apartment together on University Street. There’s nothing keeping us here, I guess, but two Bean siblings at rest will stay at rest until acted on by an outside force—and so far we’ve been outside-force-free. Inertia is a tricky thing to overcome.
So when Matilda called last week and said she and her boyfriend would be passing through on their way to the West Coast, of course I said I wanted to see her. And when she called this morning to tell me her boyfriend has a friend in town and can we pretty please double date—well, what was I suppo
I was a good friend. I said yes.
“Juniper.”
I jump as her voice, loud and slightly nasally, yanks me from my thoughts. “Yeah,” I say.
She points to my phone with one finger. “Put that away,” she says as the fingers on her other hand drum restlessly against the tabletop, her manicured nails making little click-click-click sounds. “They’ll be here soon.”
I close out of Google docs on my phone; my dying main characters are going to have to wait. “Do I look okay?” I say, turning in my chair to look at Matilda.
I guess it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if my date didn’t like how I look; he might bow out and leave early, and then I could go home and eat chips and guac in my sweats. But my atrocious dating record hasn’t beaten all of my pride out of me; I do have some left, so at the very least I want to look put together.
“Of course you do,” Matilda says, rolling her eyes. “You have the legs of a yoga instructor. I’ve never met this guy in person, but I doubt he’ll object.”
I frown as I register her words. “I thought you’d met him—Daniel?” I say, checking.
Matilda nods and takes a sip of her nine-dollar latte. “Daniel. And no; he and Ned were roommates Ned’s freshman year. I didn’t know Ned then.”
“But you said he was cute!”
“I’ve seen a picture,” she says, laying a reassuring hand on my arm. “And he is. He’s a total hottie. Muscular, but not too muscular. Like, he probably couldn’t bench press three hundred pounds, but he could for sure bench press you.”*
Well. When she puts it like that…
“I have some breath mints. Want one? In case you get a goodnight kiss?” Matilda says, patting her purse. It’s Louis Vuitton, sleek taupe lambskin embossed with the trademark initials, and easily several thousand dollars.
Do you know how much chips and guac I could buy with several thousand dollars?
“Sure,” I say, glancing down at my own bag, which was not several thousand dollars and which does not contain breath mints. It was seven-ninety-nine at the thrift store on Main, and it contains a pen, a notepad, and the napkin-wrapped croissant I shoved in earlier. Maybe someday I’ll stop hoarding extra food, but old habits die hard.
I hold out my hand, and Matilda drops one tiny, heart-shaped breath mint into my waiting palm. I pop the little white heart into my mouth and immediately feel that sense of regret that comes when you eat something horrible; this is no polite little wintergreen mint. It’s one of those heavy-duty ones, the flavor as subtle as an oncoming semitruck.
But Matilda is looking at me expectantly, so I just smile and try not to feel sad about how different we are now, about how much better we jive virtually than in person.
It’s something I’ve known about us for a long time. We became friends because we were college roommates, but we have very little in common.
You can’t have everything in life, I guess, and maybe some friendships are just better long-distance.
“Oh,” Matilda says, sitting up straighter. She smooths one hand over her sleek, dark hair, and I follow her gaze to the entrance of the coffee shop. The little bell over the door jingles as I’m hit by a blast of crisp autumn air from outside. I’ve never met the man who steps through the doors, but I’ve seen him all over her social media pages—her perpetual-suit-wearing boyfriend, Ned. He’s younger than us by several years—surprising, considering Matilda’s preference for older men. However, he comes from old money—not surprising, considering Matilda’s preference for Louis Vuitton purses and breath mints that strip the taste buds off your tongue.
“There they are,” she breathes, and suddenly I’m hit with the desire to sink down in my chair, hiding myself from view. It’s an obnoxious impulse, because it’s borne primarily from the disparity between my outfit and Matilda’s. She’s in a crisp blouse and pressed slacks, while I have on yellow overalls. If Ned’s friend is anything like Ned, he’s probably also a suit-wearing, Rolex-buying corporate type who likes blouses and slacks—
But that thought dies a swift death in my mind the second Ned’s friend steps through the door. It dies, holds its own funeral, and then decays gruesomely, oozing and rotting and dialing my ick factor up to eleven out of ten.
Because I recognize that man. Blond, five-foot-eleven, brown eyes, a bad habit of forgetting to put the toilet seat down after he pees.
“Roland?” I breathe, my jaw hanging all the way off my skull as his eyes find mine.
Roland stares at me.
I stare at him.
And then, as one, we react, erupting into chaos.
“Ew!” I say, jumping out of my seat. “Ew, ew, ew—”
“Gross,” I hear him groan. “Oh, gross—”
“Gah,” I say, spitting the breath mint out of my mouth like it’s cyanide. “I was going to kiss you—”
“Gross, Juniper, I put on cologne for this—”
“No!” I say, covering my ears and stomping one foot. “Do not tell me that! I don’t want to know anything—”
“You put on makeup?!” he cuts me off, his face screwed up with disgust as he eyes me. “Gross, June—gross. You wanted me to think you were pretty—”
“No. Don’t talk to me,” I say, flapping my hand at him. “Don’t talk to me, don’t look at me—” But I break off when I remember Matilda’s description of Roland as a man who could bench press me, and my stomach twists unpleasantly all over again. “Ew,” I groan, squeezing my eyes shut. “No, no, no, no—”
People are staring at us; Matilda and Ned look completely scandalized. We’re absolutely making a scene in this fancy-pants cafe that smells like expensive cinnamon pumpkins, and I do not care.
Because the man Matilda set me up with? It’s none other than Roland Bean.
My. Little. Brother.
“Dude, that’s my sister,” I hear a disgusted Roland saying to Ned. “Oh, gross, you said she was hot—”
My eyes pop open just in time to see Roland wave his hand, spin on his heel, and walk right out the front door again, his legs carrying him faster than I’ve ever seen him move.
“Oh. My. Goodness. Your brother,” Matilda whispers into the absolute silence as I slump back into my chair and chug my water like it can get rid of the bad taste in my mouth.
Only the bad taste is in my brain, not my mouth, and the water can’t do anything about it. It’s just going to make me have to pee. I’m going to have to use the restroom, at which point I will probably fall in the toilet because Roland never puts the seat down, and ew ew ew—
“Your brother,” Matilda says again, her wide-eyed gaze looking at me and then at the front door and then back to me again.*
“I’ve shown you pictures of him,” I wail to her. “I know I have. You have to have seen him before—”
“Not in person!” she protests, putting her hands up. “And it was just the one picture that Ned showed me, and it was from when they were roommates—”
“You said his name was Daniel!” I say. Except, I realize, I’m the only person who calls my brother by his first name. His friends all call him by some version of his middle name—Dan or Danny or Daniel. Why didn’t it occur to me that Roland might be the guy Ned was bringing?
Because no one expects to be set up with their little brother. That’s why.
“Okay, sorry, that one isn’t your fault,” I say, letting my head drop onto the table. I roll my eyes as the noise in the coffee shop gradually returns to a normal level, ignoring the snickering sounds I hear coming from the tables around us.
What, like they’ve never been a hot mess in public? Like they’ve never been set up on a blind date with their own brother? Geez.
I groan, my mind racing and my stomach twisting as I listen to Ned direct his awkward apologies to somewhere around the back of my head.
“You don’t even look like siblings,” he keeps saying, as though that will fix everything.
He’s wrong. We totally look like siblings. But I don’t have it in me to argue. “We have different dads,” I say instead with my forehead still resting on the table. I ignore the familiar twinge that comes up whenever I think about the mystery man who gave me half of my DNA.
