Amanda Flowers
Pub Date: 12 Feb 2019
Book Blurb:
USA Today bestselling author Amanda Flower is back with the third in her more-charming-than-ever Magical Bookshop mystery. Fans of Sofie Kelly and Heather Blake, prepare your bookshelves!Niagara region booksellers Violet Waverly and Grandma Daisy sleuth the slaying of a sommelier whose book signing turned into her sayonara.
January means ice wine season in the Niagara Falls region, but the festivities leave Charming Books owner Violet Waverly cold, still reeling from a past heartbreak. A past heartbreak who will be present at the annual midnight grape-harvest festival, and no magic in the world or incantation powerful enough could get Violet to attend. But Grandma Daisy, an omniscient force all on her own, informs Violet that she’s already arranged for the mystical Charming Books to host celebrity sommelier Belinda Perkins’s book signing at the party. Little do either Waverly women know, the ice wine festival will turn colder still when Violet finds Belinda in the middle of the frozen vineyard—with a grape harvest knife protruding from her chest.
Belinda grew up in Cascade Springs, but she left town years ago after a huge falling-out with her three sisters. One of those sisters, Violet’s high school friend Lacey Dupont, attends the book signing in the hope of making amends with her sister, but Belinda and Lacey end up disrupting the signing with a very public shouting match and Lacey quickly becomes the prime suspect in the sommelier’s murder.
Violet is sure Lacey is innocent, and to keep her friend out of prison, Violet asks for guidance from her magical bookshop. The shop’s ethereal essence points her to Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, but what have the four March sisters to do with the four Perkins sisters? If she can’t figure it out, Violet, herself, may turn as cold as ice. Violet, Grandma Daisy, Emerson the tuxedo cat, and resident crow Faulkner are back on the case in Murders and Metaphors, USA Today bestselling author Amanda Flower’s enchanting third Magical Bookshop mystery.
I enjoyed this book. I picked it up because I had read one of Amanda Flower's Magic Garden books and enjoyed it. The framing device of this was similar to the Magic Garden books: a young woman is now the caretaker for something magical that gives her clues on how to solve the case. In this book, the protagonist, Violet Waverly, has recently moved back to her hometown to be a caretaker to a tree watered by a magic spring which gives the bookstore the tree is located in a magical essence. This essence gives Violet clues about what's about to happen and how to solve the case - if only she can decipher them.
Like many cozies, it involved a disagreeable person being killed, and a friend of the protagonist being suspected of the crime. There's also a potential love interest in the form of the chief of police, but the obstacle of Violet being the caretaker: how can she explain the tree and the magic in the bookstore? Is she going to be alone like her mother and grandmother? (Although, I have to wonder how she's going produce the next caretaker without have some companionship? I was also curious how she never noticed the magic of the bookstore growing up; as this is the third book in the series, maybe it was covered in an earlier book?)
As long as the reader accepts the conceit of the magic bookstore, it's a fun book. If magic and mystery don't mix for you, then this probably isn't the book for you.
Recommended.
I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley.com and voluntarily chose to review.
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