A Sprinkling of Murder
by Daryl Wood Gerber
Summary
Fairy garden store owner Courtney Kelly believes in inviting magic into your life. But when uninvited trouble enters her shop, she’ll need more than a sprinkling of her imagination to solve a murder…
Since childhood, Courtney has loved fairies. After her mother died when she was ten, she lost touch with that feeling of magic. A year ago, at age twenty-nine, she rediscovered it when she left her father’s landscaping business to spread her wings and start a fairy garden business and teashop in beautiful Carmel, California. At Open Your Imagination, she teaches garden design and sells everything from fairy figurines to tinkling wind chimes and trickling fountains. Now she’s starting a book club tea.
But the light of the magical world she’s created inside her shop is darkened one night when she discovers neighboring dog-grooming business owner Mick Watkins dead beside a fountain. To make matters worse, the police suspect Courtney of the crime. To clear her name and find the real killer, Courtney will have to wing it. But she’s about to get a little help from an unexpected new friend…
My Review
Stopped reading around the 10% mark.
1 star based on the portion I read.
I didn’t get very far into this one before calling it quits. The opening dumps a huge amount of backstory all at once, which made it hard to get invested in the actual story. Instead of feeling intrigued, I felt bogged down, and I just couldn’t find a reason to push through.
The main character didn’t help. I found her grating, especially with the constant stream of trivial details that added nothing to the plot or emotional depth. It felt like being told every insignificant thought rather than being shown a compelling story.
On top of that, the writing style didn’t work for me at all. It came across as unpolished and amateurish, like the manuscript needed stronger editing and tighter pacing. Overall, this was a DNF for me and simply not my kind of book.