Devi Nair
š§ Listened in audio š¢ Narrated by Romy Nordlinger ā± Duration: 9 hours š·ļø Publisher: Tantor Media & Kensington Cozies
Look, I came in ready to be charmed. Books. Tea. A lakeside small town. A murder with a side of adoption drama.
I queued up the audio, got comfortable, and waited for the cozy magic to hit. Reader, it did not hit. What I got instead was nine hours of mild frustration, a lot of outfit descriptions, and a mystery built on a premise that should have worked, but somehow it didn't. You can feel the intention to build a warm, bookish community. All the right ingredients are technically there. But they read more like a set dressing than an immersive world you want to move into.
The adoption angle is clearly where this book wanted to plant its emotional flag. Making both the sleuth and the victim adoptees could have added real emotional heft, but here it feels clunky and over determined. Jazzi is adopted, her business partner, Dawn, is adopted, and the murder victim Brie is adopted. But Jazzi's investment in Brie's murder is largely framed through their shared adoptee status, and Dawn's overbearing adoptive parents crank the theme up to eleven in a way that feels more like a writing exercise than organic characterization. Instead of deepening the mystery, the repeated adoption beats kept pulling me out of it, like the narrative kept tapping my shoulder to remind me what the book was "about".
Romy Nordlinger's narration is competent and clear, and in a better-paced book, she'd be an asset. But no narrator can save you from a plot that meanders or characters who feel more like sketches than people. I kept waiting for someone, anyone, to do something surprising, to feel real in a way that made me lean in. That moment never arrived. And here's the thing: I'm not going back to book two. Sometimes a series just isn't your vibe, and there's no shame in knowing that about yourself early.
Would I recommend it? The setup has charm, a bookshop, a tea bar, a lakeside murder, but this one couldn't deliver on its own promise. The adoption theme felt forced into every corner, the characters stayed stubbornly surface-level, and the emotional core of the mystery never connected. If you're a die-hard fan of the Daisy Tea Garden series and want more of that world, you might find this softer landing easier to stick with. For everyone else? There are cozier cozies out there.
š§ Listened in audio š¢ Narrated by Romy Nordlinger ā± Duration: 9 hours š·ļø Publisher: Tantor Media & Kensington Cozies
Look, I came in ready to be charmed. Books. Tea. A lakeside small town. A murder with a side of adoption drama.
I queued up the audio, got comfortable, and waited for the cozy magic to hit. Reader, it did not hit. What I got instead was nine hours of mild frustration, a lot of outfit descriptions, and a mystery built on a premise that should have worked, but somehow it didn't. You can feel the intention to build a warm, bookish community. All the right ingredients are technically there. But they read more like a set dressing than an immersive world you want to move into.
The adoption angle is clearly where this book wanted to plant its emotional flag. Making both the sleuth and the victim adoptees could have added real emotional heft, but here it feels clunky and over determined. Jazzi is adopted, her business partner, Dawn, is adopted, and the murder victim Brie is adopted. But Jazzi's investment in Brie's murder is largely framed through their shared adoptee status, and Dawn's overbearing adoptive parents crank the theme up to eleven in a way that feels more like a writing exercise than organic characterization. Instead of deepening the mystery, the repeated adoption beats kept pulling me out of it, like the narrative kept tapping my shoulder to remind me what the book was "about".
Romy Nordlinger's narration is competent and clear, and in a better-paced book, she'd be an asset. But no narrator can save you from a plot that meanders or characters who feel more like sketches than people. I kept waiting for someone, anyone, to do something surprising, to feel real in a way that made me lean in. That moment never arrived. And here's the thing: I'm not going back to book two. Sometimes a series just isn't your vibe, and there's no shame in knowing that about yourself early.
Would I recommend it? The setup has charm, a bookshop, a tea bar, a lakeside murder, but this one couldn't deliver on its own promise. The adoption theme felt forced into every corner, the characters stayed stubbornly surface-level, and the emotional core of the mystery never connected. If you're a die-hard fan of the Daisy Tea Garden series and want more of that world, you might find this softer landing easier to stick with. For everyone else? There are cozier cozies out there.