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English Tea Murder (A Lucy Stone Mystery #17)
by Leslie Meier - 4/5
English Tea Murder is the kind of book that divides opinion. It's also an easy book to read and also to write. Despite the tired trick of the author to make us believe what's happening and despite the lack of tension in the book, I don't consider the latter a guilty pleasure. I give scores to books that I read based on how often my brain is inundated with niceness, comfort, anticipation, adventure, escapism, and its bitter enemy/double agent: realism.
I thought not many of the questions were fully answered. The whole stuff about Caroline's mishap was hardly addressed, unless the whole explanation was summed up in one phrase and I missed it. This book is not perfect and there was never a point where I went, yeah, five stars. Instead I believe, the book came from behind to get its 4 stars out of the blue. If only other books in the series shared similar characteristics. A couple of my favorite characters, Bill and Zoe, got simply some mentions, and they never appeared, even when Lucy had been back in her home town for two bloody months! But I admit Leslie Meier wanted to try different strokes. She maybe got fed up coming up with new, unlikely interactions among the Stone family. A word about the last victim in the book. It was her fate that sealed the high score for the book. All things considered, this book was enjoyable, especially compared to the books that I had to ditch this week. I enjoyed reading this, so I consider this mission, accomplished.
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