The Gardener's Plot is a well written, engaging debut cozy mystery by Deborah J. Benoit. Released 5th Nov 2024 by Macmillan on their St. Martin's Press imprint, it's 336 pages and is available in hardcover, audio, and ebook formats (paperback due out in early 4th quarter 2025). It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links.
Garden themed small town cozy. It's full of the quirky characters, gardening trivia, and small-town drama that readers expect. The murder mystery is self contained in this volume, and there are overarching character development threads which suggest this will be the first of a series.
It's a debut effort, and as such, it's not as polished and doesn't feel as complete as a series standing on its own merits with 5+ books extant. Worth a look for readers who enjoy garden themed cozy mysteries with female amateur sleuths. (MC Maggie is bloody lucky she will be *around* for book two, but it's not too farfetched for the genre average overall). The characterization is not highly developed, but hopefully the author will revisit the background in future volumes.
The denoument and resolution are, again, quite outlandish but not -way- too much for the genre. Readers should come equipped with a robust suspension of disbelief.
The unabridged audiobook has a run time of 8 hours 38 minutes and is capably read by Patricia Santomasso. She has a professionally trained neutral Middle-Atlantic accent reading voice without intrusive quirks. Warm, but unobtrusive. She does characters of both sexes and a range of ages seamlessly. Sound and production quality are high throughout the read.
This would be a good choice for public library acquisition, or for fans of garden themed cozies.
Three and a half stars.
Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.
No comments:
Post a Comment