4 out of 5 stars.

Crime and Poetry is the first book in the Magical Bookshop mystery series by Amanda Flower. It’s a pretty good start to the series.

Purchase Links: Amazon – B&N – BAM – Kobo

Brief Synopsis

Rushing home to sit by her ailing grandmother’s bedside, Violet Waverly is shocked to find Grandma Daisy the picture of perfect health. Violet doesn’t need to read between the lines: her grandma wants Violet back home and working in her magical store, Charming Books. It’s where the perfect book tends to fly off the shelf and pick you…

Violet has every intention to hightail it back to Chicago, but then a dead man is discovered clutching a volume of Emily Dickinson’s poems from Grandma Daisy’s shop. The victim is Benedict Raisin, who recently put Grandma Daisy in his will, making her a prime suspect. Now, with the help of a tuxedo cat named Emerson, Violet will have to find a killer to keep Grandma from getting booked for good…

Review

This was a very good book and I enjoyed it after I finally got into it.

I had a little trouble getting into it at first because of the supposed location. I’m very familiar with the section of Western New York that this book is set in and it took me a while to figure out what part of the Niagara River they were based on. At first I was confused because so much of that area has the river in a gorge and the communities are several stories above, but there is an area that is similar to what was described and once I figured out that area was where the fictional town is, it was easier for me to get into the actual story. The setting descriptions were great. They were a nice balance of description versus imagination.

I enjoyed the characters in this book. While Violet has a tendency to go looking for trouble (which can be a pet peeve for me), she’s not one of the “too stupid to live” heroines that you sometimes see in cozies. Grandma Daisy is awesome and I absolutely adore her. The characters are rich and strong, complex and easy to identify with. I look forward to seeing how the various characters grow and their relationships change throughout the series.

The story line moved along at a decent pace. There was only one time that I thought it was moving a bit slowly, but that feeling didn’t last long.

All in all, I’d say that this is an excellent start to a new series and I look forward to reading more from this author!