Secrets and Snapdragons

A Petal Pushers Flower Shop Cozy Mystery

By: L.C. Turner

Narrated by: Amelia Mendez

Length: 4 hrs and 12 mins

Publisher's summary

Presley and Cooper are permanently back in Hunter's Hollow, where she is taking over her mother's flower shop, Petal Pushers. Her biggest concern is how little she knows about flowers. One day, as she walks through the town square to the Uptown Café, she finds the mayor's face planted in a bed of snapdragons, and he's not moving.

She has a flower shop to run, a dog, and a duck to care for, and the sheriff has been clear he doesn't need her help. But Presley can't help it when her curiosity gets the best of her until she finds herself in harm's way. Can she outsmart the killer before the killer finds her?

©2023 Laina Turner (P)2023 Laina Turner

Cute story that could have been better

Ok, so I like cozy mysteries. Fluffy, not a lot of thought needed to enjoy, and I love guessing who “did it”. This one started out strong, but there were so many references to life “before” this book that it made me wonder if this was truly the first in the series. It seemed like the world building was done in small snippets, leaving me contemplating if I should have searched for prior books to more fully understand what was happening. And quite frankly… hearing about the peach cream cheese muffins being the mc’s favorite a dozen times had me going from wanting to look up a recipe to make some myself, to wanting to destroy every single muffin created. I get it, it’s a good muffin. But you beat the damn thing to death, resurrected it, and pummeled it into oblivion again. I also felt that subtly was not the mc’s strong suit, and was surprised her investigation methodology yielded results. I had a hard time with the narrator’s pronunciations and inflections. Listening to the word commerce had me twitching every time… it’s not pronounced commerace. There were times when she spoke so fast, I thought I had bumped the speed setting on my watch and it was playing double time. Author and narrator need some refining, but could result in a good listen for both if they’re able to grow.

Mayhem in Hunter's Hollow

All Presley and her friends wanted was to go grab a quick lunch instead, they find a dead body. Presley has a curious investigative mind, and she wants to find out who the murder is, but she gets too close, and now she has become the target of a setup. Presley now has to solve the murder to prove her innocence with the help of her husband and friends before she ends up in prison. I thoroughly enjoyed this book with all the plot twists and mayhem that came along with it. I loved the fact that you could never get a true angle on who the killer or killers were because just when you think you had it figured out here comes another twist.
Amelia Mendez, as the narrator, did a fantastic job juggling the many different voices and bringing the story to life. If you love cozy mysteries, I highly recommend this book. I received this book for free upon my request. I am voluntarily leaving my honest, unbiased review here of my own free will.

Great start to a new series!

Secrets and Snapdragons (#1 in the Petal Pushers Flower Shop Cozy Mystery series) by L.C. Turner. This is a spinoff of the Presley Thurman mystery series. Presley and her husband are back in her home town and she is now the new owner of her mother’s flower shop Petal Pushers. As if she didn’t have enough on her plate, Presley finds the mayor dead! She becomes a suspect so has to investigate on her own to clear her name. Good characters with lots of twists and turns. The narration by Amelia Mendez is outstanding. She creates individual voices for each character. Her performance brings the story and characters to life. I received a free audiobook code for my honest review.

Meh.

I wanted so badly to love this. The story was interesting, although I hated the ending. But I like that it moved quickly. The narrator is bright and cheerful sounding, but her odd inflections and pauses, especially every time there was a "she said" or "I said," etc, made it hard to push through. Some of her character voices were good, and others were so indistinguishable from each other, it made it impossible to figure out which person is speaking in a conversation. That may have affected my enjoyment of the story.