Review - Crime and Poetry

Review

CRIME AND POETRY By Amanda Flower

The First Magical Bookshop Mystery

Violet Waverly rushes back to Cascade Springs, NY, a place she vowed never to return, to see her dying grandmother. She discovers, however, a talking bird flying around the family bookshop and a perfectly healthy Grandma Daisy! Violet also learns that her grandma has been keeping things from her including a boyfriend and the fact that the bookshop actually has magical properties granted by the famous spring water. Although Violet wants to flee town as soon as possible, Grandma Daisy declares that Violet needs to take over as Caretaker. Before Violet can even imagine what that means, yet alone entails, she finds a dead body, as she did prompting her previous flight from town. When her Grandma is named a suspect, Violet knows she can't leave town, at least not yet! 

Amanda Flower moves out of Ohio in her most recent mystery series and comes to Western New York. She brings something else new too-magic! While prior series involve the Amish and a living history museum this time she's devised a magical bookshop. While the outside world remains mostly mundane, the bookshop required a Caretaker who cares for the birch tree growing inside the building and is given information  in the form of books. At Charming Books the books chose their reader.

In CRIME AND POETRY Flower creates a delightful new world. A charming town in WNY, a Chief of Police who is both attractive and attentive, fun and spunky animals with minds of their own (Emerson the cat and Faulkner the crow), as well as a magical bookstore combine to make a captivating entry to a great new series. As a Western New Yorker myself I love reading books set in my area and am so pleased to see a main character who is part of the Seneca Nation.

Flower is off to a great start in her new series. She crafts a solid mystery with choices from the past coloring the present. Violet is an engaging protagonist. As an academic she has an analytical mind, yet her field of study, Transcendental Literature, requires the artistic and creative side. She's therefore able to appreciate the otherworldly, even if it takes a while to acknowledge it. These facets also produce a great detective. Violet will prove more than capable to solve mysteries that come her way.

FTC Disclosure – The publisher sent me a digital ARC provided through NetGalley, in the hopes I would review it.