(GoodReads Description)
Brilliant botanist Saffron Everleigh faces her hardest challenge yet when she returns to her childhood home in the fourth book in the charming Saffron Everleigh mystery series.“A cleverly plotted puzzle” (Ashley Weaver) in the vein of Opium and Absinthe, this is perfect for fans of Rhys Bowen and Sujata Massey.
Saffron Everleigh returns to Ellington Manor after her grandfather suffers a heart attack. Back in her childhood home for the first time in years, Saffron faces tense family relationships made worse by the presence of the enigmatic Bill Wyatt, hired on as a doctor to the ailing Lord Easting. But the man is no doctor—in reality, he is a mysterious figure involved in the trafficking of dangerous government secrets, and his presence at Ellington can only mean trouble.
When their neighbors, the Hales, invite a spiritual medium into the village who starts angling for Saffron’s mother’s attention, Saffron realizes that there is more afoot in her hometown than she originally thought. Not to mention inviting Alexander to Ellington has put their budding relationship under her family’s microscope.
As tensions rise at Ellington, Bill demands that Saffron hand over old research documents belonging to her late father. With her relatives under his power as their ‘doctor,’ Saffron fears she may be forced to surrender the files along with her hopes of ever understanding her father’s obscure legacy. Nothing and no one is as they seem at Ellington. It’s through the perfumed haze of the séance’s smoke that Saffron must search for the truth before it’s too late
Fourth instalment in the Saffron Everleigh Murder Mystery series, this was a weird one.
I enjoyed the first part of the book very much. The thread about the medium involved me completely, and I loved the way it impacted the main cast’s lives. It forces them to face the past and the wounds it carries, while most of them are busy burying it.
But then the story veered completely, almost forgetting about this thread, to focus more on a kind of hazy international plot, with Saffron bouncing here and there in search of her father’s lost research, which I was never really sure why was so important.
Saffron’s family situation was interesting enough, but the fuel of the action – Saffron trying to save them from Bill’s threat – felt too abstract to me.
The story, so lively and intriguing at the beginning, dragged in the middle as it focused on this thread, at least in my opinion, and at the end, it felt kind of a mess. I found the ending a bit rushed, and I even thought the series might be concluded earlier than it was supposed to.
But this is just my impression. I don’t know whether this will really be the case.
It’s a mixed bag for me.
A Botanist's Guide to Rituals and Revenge by @authorkkhavari The hardest test for Saffron, who rushes against time to save her family from a terrible enemy #HistoricalMystery #CozyMystery Share on XA Botanist’s Guide to Rituals and Revenge
Excerpt
A cry from Elizabeth’s room caused her to nearly drop the match she’s struck to light the candle on her dressing table. She rushed into the other bedroom, candle held aloft.
Elizabeth stood at the window. She looked ghostly in the flickering light of the candle, pale limb in white art silk camiknicks. She clatched one open curtain and stared in horror out of the window.
“It can’t be,” she mumbled. “It can’t.’
Affron made to drag her from the window, but Elizabeth refused to move. “Come on, Eliza. You’ll catch a chill come now–“
They struggled against each other. “It’s Wesley,” Elizabeth insisted.
“I know, darling, Madam was horrible to torment you with him–“
“Saffron!” Elizabeth snapped, and Saffron was so startled by the sharp, lucid tone that she paused in pulling her arm toward the bed. Their eyes met. “It. Is. Wesley.” She pointed to the window.
A sense of foreboding stilled Saffron. She turned ot the window.
She flinched. The candle’s light caught on their faces, creating slight golden reflections against the gray fog that pressed on the pane. There was nothing there, not that Saffron expected to see anything outside the third-story window.
“For heaven’s sake, Eliza,” Saffron grumbled, taking her friend’s arm. “If you don’t get back into bed–“
“Saff,” Elizabeth gasped, and the real fear in her voice made Saffron stop and turn back.
The fog had shifted. Standing on the ground beneath the window was a figure.
Chills ran down Saffron’s arm. It was not just the figure of a man, but a man in a dreadfully familiar uniform.
The drab khaki hardly made an impression, however. Saffron couldn’t tear her eyes away from the pair of gaping holes where eyes ought to be, a tube hovering over the soldier’s would-be mouth.
Saffron’s gasp made it only halfway out of her mouth. The rest was caught somewhere between fear and disbelief at the impossible vision of the soldier staring up at her.
Another wave of mist drifted past, blanketing the soldier, and he was gone.
The Thursday Quotables was originally a weekly post created by Lisa Wolf for her book blog Bookshelf Fantasy . It isn’t a weekly post anymore, not even for Lisa, but just like her, I still love to share my favourite reads on Thursdays and I still use the original template which included an excerpt.
