Wednesday, March 13, 2019

"No Good Tea Goes Unpunished" by Bree Baker

It’s always nice to come across a great new cozy mystery series to check out, and for those of us who have a hankering for camellia sinensis, it’s extra nice when the mystery involves tea. Having read several different cozy series centered around tearooms, I was so pleased to find a new series about an iced tea shop and seaside café, and my first intro to the series is actually the second book, No Good Tea Goes Unpunished.

Bree Baker’s Seaside Café Mystery series centers on one Everly Swan, who has opened a seaside restaurant and iced tea shop in the coastal town of Charm, North Carolina. As befits a cozy mystery town, Charm is utterly charming, and it’s not surprising when one of Everly’s childhood friends decides to hold her wedding on the beach there. It is, however, surprising when the groom is found floating in the surf on his wedding night.

While solving the mystery of who killed the groom is the focus of the story, No Good Tea Goes Unpunished also has some thoroughly entertaining subplots. My favorite of these concerns Everly’s great-aunts, two elderly women who run a honey shop called Blessed Bee. The aunts are determined to enter a video application in a contest whose winner gets to appear in a documentary on “the plight of the American honeybee,” and the aunts' bee-themed antics are quite entertaining.

How Everly manages to juggle a murder investigation, her aunts’ bee obsession, a tea-shop-and-restaurant operation, and dueling romantic interests is quite the feat, but we’re cheering for Everly every flip-flopping step of the way.

Tea-loving readers will also enjoy the recipes included in the book, and if you’re like me and missed the first installment of this (truly) charming new series, you’ll turn the last page and immediately order the first book, Live and Let Chai, to see what you’ve missed!

Review copy courtesy of NetGalley

6 comments:

  1. This sounds like a fun read. Will have to see what I can do to get a copy. Thanks.

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  2. Thanks for the recommendation! I love Laura Child's Tea Shop mysteries, so this sounds right up my alley. Of course, I'm looking forward to Emeralds and Envy as well.....always nice to read a good book while drinking my tea!

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    1. Thanks so much for such a kind comment, Charlene! It makes my day to think that someone is looking forward to my book! :)

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  3. And now my book wish list grows by two. Whew! I must read faster.

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  4. I'll have to see if my library system has either of those books! They sound like fun.

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  5. Sounds interesting. I’ve added it to my to read list.

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