Review: The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley and Narrated by Jayne Entwistle

Flavia de Luce #1

Mystery, Published 2010

Challenges: Mount TBR, Audio Book RC

Shelf Life: 2 years, 10 mos. – bought April 2010

Read March 2013, 10 hrs unabridged

Story: 4/5

Narration: 5/5

Book Blurb:

It is the summer of 1950–and at the once-grand mansion of Buckshaw, young Flavia de Luce, an aspiring chemist with a passion for poison, is intrigued by a series of inexplicable events: A dead bird is found on the doorstep, a postage stamp bizarrely pinned to its beak. Then, hours later, Flavia finds a man lying in the cucumber patch and watches him as he takes his dying breath.

For Flavia, who is both appalled and delighted, life begins in earnest when murder comes to Buckshaw. “I wish I could say I was afraid, but I wasn’t. Quite the contrary. This was by far the most interesting thing that had ever happened to me in my entire life.”

Thoughts:

I loved quirky Flavia.  She is a 10 year old chemist, lover of anything poisons, amateur sleuth, and always looking to get back at her older 2 sisters.  The book is told from Flavia’s POV and she is always sure she sees things the right way.  When a dead black snipe shows up at the back door with a postage stamp stuck through its beak, Flavia is at once intrigued.  Then when a mysterious man shows up to talk to her father in the middle of the night and a dead man shows up in the cucumber patch, she knows something has gone awry.  Flavia takes the reader on a very interesting and usually amusing trip to solve the mysteries surrounding her grand home, Buckshaw.  There are several mysteries that run throughout the book and they are slowly unraveled, leaving plenty of time for Flavia’s character development.

The audio is very well done and I’m looking forward to listening to the next in the series.

Quotes:

Unless some sweetness at the bottom lie,

Who cares for all the crinkling of the pie?

The Art of Cookery, William King

It was as black in the closet as old blood. (First line)

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Review: A Hoe Lot of Trouble

A Hoe Lot of Trouble

Nina Quinn #1

Mystery, Published 2004

Read May 2011

3.5/5

Book Blurb:

There’s a serpent loose in Nina’s garden …

Nina Colette Ceceri Quinn’s business, Taken by Surprise — a landscaping firm specializing in surprise garden makeovers — is the only thing in her life that seems to be thriving. Her marriage to adulterous police detective Kevin Quinn has wilted. Her antisocial stepson Riley is spreading trouble around like pungent manure. Even her gardening tools are disappearing, including a rather valuable set of hoes.

Worst of all, the delightful old man who first introduced her to the joys of horticulture is dead — and not by natural causes. Something evil has taken root in Nina’s Ohio small town, and the local police — including dearly unbeloved Kev — are baffled. But it’s amazing what a resourceful gardener can dig up when she puts her mind to it — though, by sticking her hands too deeply into this fetid, fertile soil, Nina might well end up planted beneath her own petunias.

My Thoughts:

I absolutely love Heather Webber’s Lucy Valentine series so I had to check out her Nina Quinn books. Nina is the owner of her own business, TBS – Take By Surprise, where she and her crew surprise people with yard makeovers. First some old friends are being blackmailed to sell their large farm to a wealthy neighborhood developer and then her hoes start to turn up missing! On top of that, Nina’s stepson’s pet snake has gotten loose in the house! If you’re looking for a quick summer read, try out this fun garden mystery!  I sure wish Nina could come to my house!

 

Other reviews of Heather Webber’s books to check out:

Lucy Valentine Series #1:Truly, Madly 4.5/5

And I gave Book #2: Deeply, Desperately 5/5

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Review: Sworn to Silence

Sworn to Silence by Linda Castillo

Kate Burkholder #1

Thriller, Published 2009

Received review copy from LibraryThing Early Reviewers, but listened to audio

Challenges: Thriller & Suspense, Series IV, Audio Book Challenge

Read Nov 2010, 11hours 43 minutes (unabridged)

Verdict: 2.8/5

First Line: She hadn’t believed in monsters since she was six years old, back when her mom would check the closet and look behind her bed at night.

Book Blurb:

In the sleepy rural town of Painters Mill, Ohio, the Amish and “English” residents have lived side by side for two centuries.  But sixteen years ago, a series of brutal murders shattered the peaceful farming community.  In the aftermath of the violence, the town was left with a sense of fragility, a loss of innocence.  Kate Burkholder, a young Amish girl, survived the terror of the Slaughterhouse Killer but came away from its brutality with the realization that she no longer belonged with the Amish.

Now, a wealth of experience later, Kate has been asked to return to Painters Mill as chief of police.  Her Amish roots and big-city law enforcement background make her the perfect candidate.  She’s certain she’s come to terms with her past – until the first body is discovered in a snowy field.  Kate vows to stop the killer before he strikes again, but to do so, she must betray both her family and her Amish past – and expose a dark secret that could destroy her.

Thoughts:

I had originally received a final copy to review from LibraryThing, but never got around to reading it.  Truthfully, this is not my typical kind of read, but finally picked up the audio version to listen to in the car.  First let me list the things I enjoyed about this book: woman chief of police in charge, wholesome Amish setting juxtaposed with the evil gruesome murders, the various characters of Painters Mill – namely Mona, Glock, Pickles, and John Tomasetti , learning more about the Amish – Kate was raised in an Amish home, but after a tragic event as a teen, she left the faith.  It is this secret that she and her family has kept that continues to haunt her and almost ruins the current investigation, and mostly I enjoyed the continuing mystery of “who done it.” I really didn’t know who the real murderer was until the last moment.

Overall, I enjoyed the mystery, but not the graphic descriptions of the murder victims – beware that it details rapes, autopsies of several bodies, and brutal torture of young women.  This may be necessary to make the crimes more realistic, but it was definitely hard for me to get through these scenes.  I would like to know what happens to the characters, but I don’t think I’ll be picking up the next in the series.

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Review: The Masque of the Black Tulip

The Masque of the Black Tulip by Lauren Willig
The Pink Carnation Series #2
Historical Fiction/Romance/Mystery, Published 2005
Challenges: Series Challenge IV
Read: September 2010, 429 pp.
Verdict: 4/5

Book Blurb:

Modern-day graduate student Eloise achieved the academic coup of the century when she unmasked one of history’s greatest spies, the Pink Carnation, who saved England from Napoleon.  But now she has a million questions about the Carnation’s deadly French nemesis, the Black Tulip.  And she’s pretty sure that her handsome on-again, off-again crush, Colin Selwick, has the answers somewhere in his archives.  When she finally comes across an old codebook, Eloise discovers something juicier than she ever imagined: an unlikely pair who were hot on the trail of the Black Tulip and had every intention of stopping him from killing the Pink Carnation and bringing down England.  But what they didn’t know what that wile they were trying to find the Tulip – and stumbling upon something like love – the Black Tulip was watching them…

My Thoughts:

This is the second in the Pink Carnation series, which I read the first March 2008 and had a bit of a hard time remembering who the characters were and how they were related to one another.  This installment follows Eloise, a quirky academic that is searching for first hand historical accounts in England of the regency spies.  In the first book, The Pink Carnation, Eloise is trying to discover the identity of the elusive spy, the Pink Carnation, but has stumbled upon an entire web of spies with flowery identities.  She is now searching for connections between the spies, especially the identity of their French nemesis, the Black Tulip.  Eloise has been invited to spend a weekend researching through Colin Selwick’s library and their relationship continues to grow very (very) slowly.

Most of the novel takes place in the past, within the realm of what Eloise is researching. I like the idea of a research project coming to life, in a sense; finding out the lives behind the names written on aging paper. The reader often finds out more than I think Eloise is actually discovering in her research.  Here we follow the story of the annoying little sister of the Purple Gentian from the first book, who has since grown up, and her love interest and brother’s best friend, Miles Dorrington.  I absolutely loved their story because they already loved each other and had become closer friends since Richard married and moved out of the Selwick home, and they begin to truly “see” each other for the first time, amidst all the chaos of spying on the French.

Henrietta’s character brings a lot of humor and is often very sarcastic, which I really enjoyed.  Overall, I am looking forward to the next in the series, #3 – The Deception of the Emerald Ring.

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Review: The Tale of Halcyon Crane

The Tale of Halcyon Crane by Wendy Webb

Gothic Fiction/Mystery/Suspense, Published 2010

Read May 2010

Challenges: Thriller & Suspense Reading Challenge, Time Travel Reading Challenge

Shelf Life: N/A – I read this one immediately!!

5/5

First Line: “I was the only passenger on the ferry crossing to Grand Manitou Island.”

Book Blurb:

When a mysterious letter lands in Hallie James’s mailbox, her life is upended.  Hallie was raised by her loving father, having been told her mother died in a fire decades earlier.  But it turns out her mother , Madlyn, was alive until very recently.  Why would Hallie’s father have taken her away from Madlyn?  What really happened to her family thirty years ago?

In search of answers, Hallie travels to the place her mother lived, a remote island in the middle of the Great Lakes.  Most of the stiff islanders are unwelcoming, and she soon realizes her family’s dark secrets are enmeshed in the history of this strange community.  And then there’s the grand Victorian house bequeathed to her – maybe it’s the eerie atmosphere or maybe it’s the prim, elderly maid who used to work for her mother, but Hallie just can’t shake the feeling that strange things are starting to happen…

My Thoughts:

Strange things indeed!  Once Hallie sets foot off the ferry and onto Grand Manitou Island, the reader is transported through time.  It’s the off season for the touristy spot and not many islanders stay through winter.  It is here that thirty-something Hallie learns her past, including the fact that she has been on the island before, though she does not remember it.  She does not remember her mother either and soon learns the secrets of her family’s past from Iris, her mother’s maid.  It is Iris who tells Hallie of her family history and tells it so well it is almost as if she were a first-hand witness to events happening nearly a century ago.  So many twist and turns and Hallie can see and hear every aspect of the haunting tales.   Will Hallie discover her past before history continues to repeat itself?

I LOVED this book!  If  you’re looking for a gothic ghost tale with wonderfully creepy graveyards, ghosts, witching spells, and haunting dreams full of family secrets, you have to read this book!  It was a random purchase at Borders one day a few weeks ago.  Right away I was drawn to the cover with the ghost girl sitting on the antique couch.  Hallie’s Manitou Island is fashioned after the real island of Mackinac off of northern Michigan in the Great Lakes.  Like Manitou, they too are a tourist spot that do not use any motorized vehicles, but horse drawn carriages.  The author also points out that the storm of 1913 mentioned in the novel was a real tragic event that remains the worst storm in the history of the Great Lakes.

Quotes:

That’s how powerful stories are.  They can actually create the past if told often enough. p. 11

It occurs to me that you might like to hear about your family now.  I’m the only one left alive to tell you their story.  If you don’t hear it from me, you won’t hear it.  And they – the stories of your people – will be lost forever. -p. 137

There, with the lights of the kitchen illuminating the darkness, in a house built on secrets and filled with ghosts and murder, I realized that the lines between Iris’s stories and my reality were blurring.  Were Will and I somehow caught up in my family’s grim and bloody fairy tale? p. 245

Read-Alikes: The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

Challenge Buttons:

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