In Peppermint Peril

This Christmas, Callie Aspen returns to her childhood home in Heart’s Harbor, Maine, where her great-aunt runs Book Tea, a vintage tearoom where every sweet treat contains a bookish clue. Upon arrival in the fairy-tale snowy town, Callie is drawn into the preparations for a special tea party at Haywood Hall, the rambling house of Heart’s Harbor’s oldest resident, rich but lonely widow Dorothea Finster. Dorothea has invited her estranged relatives, old friends, and the elite of the town to make a mysterious announcement about her will.

Everybody is determined to attend, despite not liking each other or even their hostess. Callie’s old friend Sheila complicates things by using the tea party to announce her daughter’s engagement. But her daughter isn’t sure she’s in love with the young lawyer her mother thinks is perfect for her.

Catering to people who each have their agenda isn’t easy for the Book Tea crew, especially once a valuable engagement ring goes missing, and a dead body turns up in the conservatory. Can Callie and her great aunt use their love of clues to dig into the crimes and show their unhappy hostess and squabbling guests the true Christmas spirit?

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Series: A Tea and a Read Mystery – Book #1
Author: Joy Avon
Genre: Cozy Mystery/Tea/Holiday
Publisher: Crooked Lane Books

Rating:

In the debut novel for “A Tea and a Read Mystery” series, Joy Avon has managed to delight and entertain, with characters that are well written, fun, and truly human. This first book, In Peppermint Peril, has quarks, red herrings, laugh out loud moments, and real emotion. The writing is fluid, with transitions as smooth as glass. There is little in this book that readers will have trouble understanding, and it will leave them wanting more.

Callie is a busy traveler who is determined to go back to her regular life just as soon as the holidays are over, but life has a way of getting in the way. Seeing her hometown and being with the people she loves has made her long to plant roots and stick around but, she is trying to convince herself that she is happy with her life, and there is no need to change. But circumstance, a new pet, and a possible love interest put a wrench in her Christmas departure plans.

Secondary characters are likable, even when they are trying not to be. Readers will fall in love with Callie’s Aunt, Iphy. The setting of Heart’s Harbor, Maine, although fictitious, makes readers want to take a sightseeing trip. It is quaint with hints of a life that is simple and old-fashioned. The tea house setting is the perfect backdrop for this story, with the love of a good mystery book, the tea house plays on the reader’s sense of times gone by and adds a yearning for holidays the way they used to be.

The murder victim starts as a happy memory for Callie, someone she always looked up to in her youth. At first, she is very upset by the death but soon comes to realize that not everyone she knew when she was young is what they seemed to be at the time. The clues to the killer’s identity are all there but are not easily revealed, and other problems crop up along the way. Readers will love the fact that they have no idea who the killer is until the very last pages.

This debut book, In Peppermint Peril, has lots of twists and turns, plenty of drama, but it also has compassion and love. This author and the series will continue to evolve as new books are added, and it will be fun to see what becomes of these wonderful characters and what kind of trouble Callie can get into. I highly recommend this book.