Header image with four cats and the text: Pussreboots, a book review nearly every day. Online since 1997
Now 2025 Previous Articles Road Essays Road Reviews Author Black Authors Title Source Age Genre Series Format Inclusivity LGBTA+ Art Portfolio Purchase Art WIP

Recent posts


Month in review

Reviews
All Summer Long by Hope Larson
Bat and the End of Everything by Elana K. Arnold
Circle by Mac Barnett and Jon Klassen
Eggs Benedict Arnold by Laura Childs
Elegant Yokai Apartment Life, Volume 1 by Hinowa Kouzuki
Everlasting Nora by Marie Miranda Cruz
Finding Dorothy by Elizabeth Letts
The Fire Cat by Esther Averill
Fire Monks: Zen Mind Meets Wildfire at the Gates of Tassajara by Colleen Morton Busch
Heartwood Hotel 1: A True Home by Kallie George
Insurgent by Veronica Roth
Ivy Aberdeen's Letter to the World by Ashley Herring Blake
Kid Gloves: Nine Months of Careful Chaos by Lucy Knisley
Knife Edge by Andrew Lane
Like Vanessa by Tami Charles
Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli
Mothership by Martin Leicht and Isla Neal
Murders and Metaphors by Amanda Flower
An Ocean of Minutes by Thea Lim
Prose and Cons by Amanda Flower
The Road to Oz by L. Frank Baum
A Scandal in Scarlet by Vicki Delany
Secret Coders 6: Monsters & Modules by Gene Luen Yang and Mike Holmes
Skyward: The Story of Female Pilots in WWII by Sally Deng
A Sprinkle of Spirits by Anna Meriano
The Stone Angel by Margaret Laurence
An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon
Watch Us Rise by Renée Watson and Ellen Hagen
Wee Sister Strange by Holly Grant
You Are Light by Aaron Becker

Miscellaneous
It's Monday! What Are You Reading? (April 01)
It's Monday! What Are You Reading? (April 08)
It's Monday! What Are You Reading? (April 15)
Looking ahead to July
March 2019 Sources
March 2019 Summary
Reading for Work
The value of ebooks
Weekends

Road Essays
FF0000: Orphans to the city by way of the interstate

CCFFFF: Siblings to Utopia by Way of the Cornfield: a reading of "Slumber Party.

CCFFCC: Siblings through the maze to utopia

CCFF99: siblings to utopia via the labyrinth

Road Narrative Update for March 2019

Previous month



Rating System

5 stars: Completely enjoyable or compelling
4 stars: Good but flawed
3 stars: Average
2 stars: OK
1 star: Did not finish


Privacy policy

This blog does not collect personal data. It doesn't set cookies. Email addresses are used to respond to comments or "contact us" messages and then deleted.


Murders and Metaphors: 04/24/19

Murders and Metaphors

Murders and Metaphors by Amanda Flower is the third book in the Magical Bookshop mystery series. Between books two and three, the series' publisher changed from Berkeley Mysteries to Crooked Lane. I have a feeling that the publishing of book three was rushed. I"ll get to that later.

Book three opens with Violet and Daisy getting ready for an offsite book signing. A local sommelier has a new book out and the signing is being hosted at the winery that belongs to the mayor's parents. They specialize in ice wine and the event will include a night picking of grapes.

There's a row at the event between the author and her estranged sister. Violet would pay more attentions but she's distracted by Emerson as he has stowed away to the event. When he gets loose, he leads Violet the author's body.

The mystery of the author's death is commented on by the bookshop via hints dropped in the form of Little Women. The author was one of four sisters. Now Violet's friend, her estranged sister, is the prime suspect.

I'm not a fan of Little Women. I tried and failed to read it as a teen. But I like the way it is used here to examine the family dynamics of the author and her other three sisters.

But the book suffers from a lack of copyediting. Or, as I said before, rushed. There are at least a dozen basic errors in the text. You for your, your for you're, missing prepositions, and similar small by glaring errors. None of the other Crooked Lane books I've read have had these problems. I can say the same of the other two Amanda Flower mysteries in this series. That's why I'm guessing that the publication of book three was rushed when Crooked Lane bought the series from Berkeley.

The fourth book is scheduled for November. It's currently listed as Verse and Vengeance but it also has been listed as Spoke and Word. Regardless, I'm looking forward to book four.

Four stars

Comments (0)


Lab puppy
Name:
Email (won't be posted):
Blog URL:
Comment:

Tumblr Mastadon Flickr Facebook Facebook Contact me

1997-2025 Sarah Sammis