Book Review || Chamomile Mourning

Chamomile Mourning
A Tea Shop Mystery #6
Laura Childs

Published: March 2006

Berkley Prime Crime, mass market pbk, 306p.
ISBN: 978-0-425-20618-8

Charleston, South Carolina, is alive with music, dancing, and the arts as the Spoleto festival gets underway  But Indigo Tea Shop owner Theodosia Browning feels far from festive when the inaugural Poet's Tea is forced into one of the Heritage Society's austere halls by rain.  And when it rains, it pours - as proven when a respected auction house owner plummets from the balcony, landing dead on Theodosia's specially-prepared cake.  Worse yet, it looks like someone helped him over the edge.  With a full kettle of suspects, Theodosia pursues an investigation into the murky swamps of the Low Country, where she uncovers a thriving criminal enterprise of art forgery, fraud - and murder...

 

 

What I liked?  Well, this is the book where Parker is introduced.  I liked him more than Jory as a character, but he's still not stellar.

The relationship between Theo and Drayton is also very sweet and paternal.  Earl Grey is always a favourite.  Such a sweet and loyal friend to Theo, and so adorable in his role as a service dog in the nursing home and hospital.

Those recipes people!  I don't think I have to say anything else on that score.  I only wish that I had a tea shop like this near me.

But on the flip side...

I say this for every book.  Theo needs to learn how to say 'NO!' to people.  She is such a people-pleaser that I find this aspect of her personality very frustrating.  Also, Delaine is such a selfish and pushy person that I wish she'd develop laryngitis, or take a world cruise, at some stage so we could have some Delaine-free time.

Theo's insatiable curiosity - and the need to stick her nose into a police investigation - is very predictable plot device and really I think there needs to be a shake-up of what's happening in the story arc in general.

Unfortunately I've had to read these books out of order.  My library only has a few, and I pick them up where I can so I've been all over the place in terms of continuity.  However, Theo has remained a constant character with no extremes of behaviour so reading books out of order is not such a huge deal.  The only glitch is the spoilers as to whom she is currently dating if you happen to pick up a book further on in the series.

So, despite all the gripes that I have about this series in the way the characters never seem to develop and lose some of their more annoying traits, I do enjoy diving into the world of the Indigo Tea Shop.  Will definitely be filling in the gaps in my bookshelves, and eagerly await getting my hands on the latest book.

Not the best book in the series, but a good way to spend an hour or two.

Overall I rate this book

Oh, and if you can recommend a good cosy mystery series then please let me know in the comments  down below.  I'm in desperate need of a new series to sink my teeth into ;-D

Until next time,

 

It's a Cosy Mystery Week

 

Went back to the coast to visit family this week and got side tracked by all the books.  Now I'd already had a bit of a book-fest over the weekend, but when I saw all the books in the cheap bins at the shopping centre, mum and I dived right in...

 

... and I'm oh so glad that I did.  I managed to find some books that either completed a series, or were titles I'd tried to find for years in some cases.  It's amazing how titles are OOP forever - or so it seems - and yet, there they are.  Right at the bottom of the pile.  So, thanks to my spur of the moment trip, I found the third and final book in Kathryn Lilley's A Fat City Mystery series, Makeovers Can Be Murder.  I have found all three of the books in different cheap sales over the past 3 or so years.  Now I can finally read the series as a whole - and not have to wonder at what happened in the missing book.
 

This time I seemed to go for mostly Cosy Mysteries (Berkley Prime Crime, etc).  I have found the paranormal romance books just aren't hitting the spot lately.  I've raided family bookshelves of older cosy's that are no longer wanted, and now have four piles of books that I really should post reviews on.  I seem to have gone from being stuck in one rut, to jumping feet first into another.  Oh well...

 

Right now I'm very much enjoying Gemma Halliday and her delightfully ditzy, yet headstrong, Maddie Springer in The High Heels series.  I even managed to find the first book of her Hollywood Headline Mystery series too.  Heather Webber is another great author I've stumbled across.  I bought her book Deeply, Desperately as part of last weekend's 'perfect reading' session, and found out that my old library had the first and third books in the series... yeah, me!  Finally there was a real last minute inclusion of a book that nearly got tossed back (I already had 7 books in my hands people!) and I'm so glad that I followed that last minute impulse not to chuck it.  It was Gabriella Herkert's Catnapped.  This was such a great book.  It is the first of a series and I'm heading over to put it on my wishlist after I post this. 

 

So, now that I've spent WAY too much money this week on books I'm off to see what else I can find online ;-D.  Hope your week was as blissfully fabulous as mine was.

 

Happy reading!