To do a little bit more for homeless people than to show respect for them as human beings, Sally Solari volunteers to help with a benefit dinner where proceeds will for to projects for the homeless. Sadly, at the end of the dinner one of the employees of the restaurant that is hosting the event is found dead, and one of the silent auction items - a signed first edition of Mastering the Art of French Cooking - is missing.

The lead detective asks/tells her not to get involved. One of the owners of the restaurant cum bookshop that hosted the event asks Sally to get involved. Sally is torn, not much, and starts to ask some questions left and right.

Meanwhile she also has to deal with her boyfriend, Eric. He suggested to move in together, but neither likes to live in the other’s place. Then Eric suffers a blow to the head while surfing.

Eh, what to think of this story? It was number six of a series, so many established characters and relationships. It was easy enough to read as a stand-alone, though there were lingering moments of “there’s more to that backstory than explained here”. It’s probably meant to entice to read the previous books. It worked in a way (I though about it), but I don’t think I will in actuality. I didn’t get much of a sense for Sally Solari, other than that she is a bit of a do-gooder and always the right person in the right place.

Okay, except when she was attacked while walking her dog. Or when she went to confront the murderer. Despite Nicole’s assertions that could have ended differently.

Spoiler

Contrary to Nichole's claims, in cozy mysteries people that have previously not used a gun pull out one at the final confrontation with the sleuth.

And how do you hide a phone in your bra? These days phones are huge, and men notice breasts (and rectangular things sized 3 by 6 inches near them). Men in relationships too. Just saying.

I read and ARC through NetGalley.

The mystery is fun, the new ghost truely obnoxious. I was hoping for more B&B guest action, or guests interacting with one another.

The book could do with one last round of editting. There are missing words, extra words and random bits of dialogue that don’t seem to belong to anyone (though some might work as interior monologue.)

I read an ARC through Booksirens.

I just felt Mwah for most of the book.

I didn’t engage with Chloe. She took a leave from her job as a librarian to go to the memorial service of her best friend and then stayed in Florida because that friend had asked her to help his grandmother if anything should happen to him. It seems she didn’t take the promise seriously when she made it - she didn’t aks what his grandmother was like or what sort of help she would need - but she does take it seriously now, even though the grandmother seems to be quite capable to take care of herself.

But Chloe made the promise, so she is going to stick around until the grandmother needs help. OK, sure.

Then Chloe finds a body behind the dumpster behind the bar of the grandmother. It’s one of the bar’s regulars. It seems the grandmother, Vivi, is the main suspect - she’s called in for questioning a few times - and finally Chloe has her opportunity to help.

Vivi is not a particularly nice person. At least not to Chloe, she’s rather dismissive towards her. While she also could have been like: Wow, you drive all the way from Chicago to Florida to attend my grandson’s memorial service; you must have really liked him. Pull up a chair and we’ll share fond memories.

Finished it because I started it, but not excited to read the next in the series. Or any cozy for the moment. Books shouldn’t do that, turn you off the genre.

It was fun.

Experienced cozy readers can guess the murderer pretty early on.

The police were oversharing and in the end more impressed with Hattie than was warranted. I'm actually surprised Ace didn't figure this one out before Hattie. After all, she had such a vivid imagination when she proposed Hattie was the killer. ;-)

I liked the idea behind this: a look at gardens and gardening in cozy mysteries. I didn't really think it through what that would mean. This book is about gardens and gardening, not so much about cozy mysteries or sleuths. It read like a treatise.

I loved the artwork in the book.

Unfortunately, I read this book in the NetGalley App on my phone. The book was not adapt to device, which meant I was dealing with very tiny print.

Though the book was not to my taste it was well-researched and well-written.

I received an ARC through NetGalley.

I experienced a near instant dislike of Athena and her family. The first chapter opens a day after the events of the previous book. I haven’t read that, but it seems Athena solved a murder and the murderer tried to kill her. And the very next day she’s back at work!

Yipes. Rather than surprise her at work with a party and cake couldn’t the family give her a couple of days off to process those events? And save the hurray-for-our-hero cake for family dinner that evening? Okay, later it turns out that her mom and dad suggests to Athena to take some time off and it’s Athena that thinks she’s fine.

At work - a family run garden center - Athena is approached by Abby Knight, a fellow amateur sleuth turned private investigator, to help in a murder case that involves her cousin. The cousin was emcee at a fashion show where one of the models ended up dead. Cause of death: poison in a water bottle. The cousin is currently held in jail because she handled the water bottles and failed to follow police directions. That is: left town when told not to leave town.

As a side note: getting tired of that cliché. If police don’t want people to leave town, they should arrest them outright. If the police don’t arrest them, people can go where they want to. Including to their hometown 90 minutes away.

I read on, but my instant dislike seems to have made me prejudiced. While I was hoping to find some things likeable about the characters - always looking out for a new favourite series - I found another thing to dislike at every turn.

Athena reflects on her previous investigations - spoiling the reader on some earlier books in the process. It appears that Athena and Case’s modus operandi is to throw around accusations until they hit target. That’s not an investigation. That’s grounds for a slander lawsuit.

Abby Knight is no better. She manages to intimidate a hotel manager with the words: “[I am] a paying customer with an active Yelp account.” That hotel must have seriously few Yelp reviews if one review could spoil their rating. I also found her manipulation of a witness less than charming. “I’m a private investigator. It is my business.” O RLY? No one is required to talk just because someone else asks them. Private investigators are regular citizens. They do not have police power.

Abby does get riled up rather easily by people who say yellow is not her colour or insult her intelligence. There’s no need for her to impress these people, so why does she care about their opinions? It should be water off a duck’s back to her.

The side characters, the other potential suspects, are an interesting bunch of characters. They made the mystery interesting. Athena’s family not so much. Her sisters Selene and Maia are just filler. Her sister Delphi acts about ten years younger than she is. Athena is sceptical of Delphi’s coffee ground readings - hurray for that - but starts to take them more seriously when it suits her investigation. Delphi did a reading of Abby and saw she was being followed and the letters M and S. Athena immediately thinks of one of her suspects. A sceptic would have pointed out those are the initials of Abby’s husband Marco Salvare.

Anyway, Athena solves the case when the murderer drops by unannounced. There’s something about the murderer that doesn’t make sense: why would they continue to work in a place that wreaks havoc on their allergies? They seemed to be in a position where they had other options.

Spoiler

Such as not stock the product that gives them allergies.

And because this book has left me in a mood to nitpick:

Athena tries to be as clever as Jessica Fletcher - catching someone out in a mistake - but her memory is not as good as Jessica’s. She asks the mayor’s security guard if he knows anything about a note left at her office. He replies he wasn't on Greene Street. Athena finds this suspect because she never mentioned where her office was. No, but the mayor did the previous day when he introduced her and Case as the owners of the Greene Street Detective Agency. The security guard could have remembered that.

There also were a few instance of technology fail. Case has removed the doors from his jeep. Yet, after leaving the fair he unlocks the doors of his jeep and Athena even holds open a door. Which is it? Doors or no doors?

Athena is scroll through a list of questions on her iPad and suddenly her screen goes blank. She is puzzled for a moment and then remembers she hasn’t charged it. My iPad always warns if there’s less than 10% battery charge. Why doesn’t hers?

Long review short: I did not find a new favourite series, but I can scratch two series off my ever growing to read list.

Elodie Parker is returning home for the first time in four years to attend her sister’s hen do and wedding. On the nine hour flight she experiences some turbulence, but when she opens her eyes she finds herself eight years in the past. Four years before one of her bests friends was killed in a motorcycle accident. Four years before she broke up with the love of herself. Elodie finds herself with a chance to hang out with her friend one last time before she is whisked back to the present.

That is until she is sent to the past a second time. Slowly she gets determined to try to stop or change the events that lead up to Ed’s death.

The story is told with a lightness of tone, but Ed’s secret (and the reveal that lead to the fight that lead to his death) is handled with some heavy handedness. There was so much foreshadowing that I’m sure I’ve figured it out pretty early on. By the time Elodie was returned to the present for the third time I was starting to wonder how much longer the author was going to drag it out.

The beginning of the book was definitely better than the end. Maybe I’m just very quick at seeing patterns, but even after the fourth trip back Elodie hadn’t figured out what event instigated a trip back in time. And she also hadn’t figured out what triggered her to go back to the present time. I thought she was pretty dense when she started to freak out that she had not been able to change the past, when pretty clearly her present was different. (So, uhm, yeah, something must have been changed in the past. So why not hang on to that little bit of optimism instead of getting worked up?)

The book clearly falls in the feelgood genre, but it fails as a romcom. Whatever the attraction with Tomasz was, it was all tell, no show. Therefore not delivering on the romance at all.

I read an ARC through NetGalley.

Loved it.

I requested this book on NetGalley after I read a few reviews and figured this would be the sort of book I'd like. I liked it even better than I thought.

Brynn ran away from her hometown and hasn't been back in twenty years. And even though the network has been marketing her as all-American small town girl, she has nothing nice to say about her hometown. Which she accidentally does live on television. There is nothing to it, she has to go back to Adelaide Springs and apologize to the people she inadvertently has insulted.

Sebastian is running away too, but he ended up in Adelaide Springs. Though he thinks it's a good idea that Brynn comes to town with a camera so the town can get some free advertising on national television, he certainly doesn't like being stuck with the woman for five days. He dislikes her from the moment she starts to speak to him.

Of course they'll warm up to each other, and I like the way that they did. And I liked the way Brynn got a renewed appreciation for the town and the people she had left behind.

It was a bit distracting that Brynn's chapters were told in first person and Sebastian's were told in third. It made it a bit hard to get close to Sebastian. But then, it was probably fitting for his character that you didn't get close to him.

I read an ARC through NetGalley.