Unfortunately, the book itself was not . . . my cup of tea. (Groan. If you've read Murder in the Bookshop, or anything remotely like it, you get the reference.) I mean, you know I love Agatha Christie, and I love a good cozy mystery, so it wouldn't be a stretch to think I would like a murder mystery set in WWI-era London. But this one . . . the characters were all over the place. Was the protagonist a feisty heroine, or a brat? Was her aunt a feminist living on the fringes of society or was she a femme fatale? Was Hannah's love interest a cardboard cutout of Superman, his conspicuously broad shoulders dressed in Edwardian extravagance?
The writing, generally, was not good. In the Acknowledgements, the author thanks her editors "for smoothing out of my clumsy phrasing" which makes me wonder how bad it must have been before said smoothing. I could not sink into the story because I was constantly re-writing in my head. And the plot was such a jarring mixture of pearl-clutching and tongue-in-cheek. Not to mention that on every other page, someone was making tea! (Gosh, I'm tired, I'll make a pot of tea. Oh, I just woke up, would you make me a pot of tea? Dancing makes me thirsty, let's make a pot of tea. Gracious, there's a dead body in my bookstore. This calls for a pot of tea. Oh, and it's my best friend . . . might as well start a second pot!) It honestly crossed the line from cozy to ridiculous.
Still, it was a mystery! And I remain afflicted by the inability to abandon a book once I've started reading it. So of course I read the whole thing, and overall it was a positive experience. I mean, some books are so bad that they actually make me angry. This one wasn't that bad.
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