First in the series for me. I’m not hooked.

Violet is preparing for her wedding to Chief David Rainwater a week before Christmas. Well, her grandmother and her best friend are taking care of most of the preparations. Which is a good thing because Christmas is the busiest time of the year for a bookshop owner.

This thought kept distracting me throughout the story: if Christmas shoppers are such a big deal (half her annual revenue Violet musses at some point), then why set your wedding date and honeymoon in the week before Christmas?

The honeymoon is postponed as after the ceremony Chief Rainwater picks a dead body out of the river and Violet recognizes the woman is someone that came into the shop a few days before to sell a first print copy of Walden. A book that is now missing. The death is quickly ruled an accident, but Chief and Violet agree that she will look for the book for three days, before they go on their honeymoon.

And this is what irked me: Violet seems to be a responsible and organized person, yet she had not arranged for anyone to take care of her shop while she was away for the week. When she wants to go snooping, she has to make an impromptu call to a friend to watch the shop for her for a few hours. How is that responsible? Or planning ahead?

Violet talks about the essence of the shop a lot, about watering the birch tree with water from the spring and that she goes to fetch the water after dark because she doesn’t want to answer awkward questions. (What’s wrong with the answer ‘the birch tree seems to thrive best on it’ and just leave it at that?) I’m actually more worried that she’s bossed around by her pets. I guess you’d have to be a pet owner to understand that.

I read an ARC through NetGalley.