"A Sprinkling of Murder" by Daryl Wood Gerber

Over the weekend, I finished reading the first book in the new Fairy Garden Mystery series by Daryl Wood Gerber (who also writes as Avery Aames), and it was such a unique premise for a series that I just devoured it!

The storybook setting is truly a character all its own in A Sprinkling of Murder. In the charming, dog-friendly coastal town of Carmel-by-the-Sea, Courtney Kelly has opened a combination fairy garden store and tea shop called Open Your Imagination. In addition to selling fairy gardens and supplies, Courtney teaches others how to create and personalize their own fairy gardens. Perhaps she has a leg up on other fairy gardeners, though, since she has a friend-slash-muse in the form of the tiny fairy Fiona, who loves showing up at inopportune moments to surprise Courtney and her cat, Pixie. Only those who believe in fairies can actually see Fiona, and it's quite entertaining to observe which characters are believers and which are not.

Before dawn one morning, Courtney is at home in bed when Fiona dashes over to say something horrible has happened at Open Your Imagination. Courtney rushes to her shop and finds the body of the cantankerous Mick Watkins, owner of a neighboring business, lying next to the shop's backyard fountain, and he's been strangled. Courtney is immediately pegged as a prime suspect not only because Mick is found at her business but also because the two had sparred over him wanting to expand his grooming business, Wizard of Paws, into her coveted space. The body is barely cold before Courtney learns that Mick was cheating on his wife, Emily, with a local council member, an entanglement that complicates the investigation from the get-go. Lots of locals had reason to want Mick out of the picture, and not all of them have alibis that check out.

The mystery keeps readers hopping throughout the book, but the real stars of the show here are this magical town, the fairy garden business itself, and the many special teatimes, such as a book club tea held at the shop. A cozy mystery featuring a fairy as a character runs the risk of being too cute to be believable, but Gerber succeeds in making Fiona every bit as real—and with just as many foibles—as the human characters. 

Also, like many cozy mysteries, this one concludes with quite a few of the recipes mentioned in the story, and the author has included several gluten-free versions of the treats as well, which will no doubt be appreciated by those who eat gluten-free foods.