This is the second book of the Very Cherry Mystery Series. If you are looking for a cozy sort of mystery mixed up with a love triangle then this is one you have to pick up. We meet our main character Whitney, who has returned to her small Wisconsin town to take over control of her family’s bed and breakfast, The Cherry Orchard Inn.
It’s almost not shocking when she is found dead at the bottom of the stairs of the Inn with a cherry scone jammed in her mouth. Someone has shut her up permanently and everything seems to be pointing to Whitney as her murderer.
Despite being at the center of a murder mystery, Whitney does find time to find herself in the middle of a love triangle between herself, Jake and Jack’s friend Tate. This is where a lot of the drama happens as even though Whitney is a 30-something-year-old woman, she is incredibly immature when it comes to her romantic life. She’s too afraid to turn down Tate, but also too afraid to be rejected by Jack and it lends itself to much of the drama between all of them.
However, the twist at the end really brought this book together for me. While this is not a murder mystery that is littered with clues and it is more of a cozy, quick read than something more substantial, Darci Hannah does deliver a good, shocking end with a murderer that is not our romantically entwined heroin.
Cherry Scones & Broken Bones (A Very Cherry Mystery Book 2)
edited by Scott Allan, Emily A. Beeny, and Gloria Groom will be released on June 25, 2019 from Getty Publishing with ISBN 9781606066041. This review corresponds to an advanced electronic galley that was shared in exchange for a review.
When I had received this galley, I was not aware that I was part of a series. The Southern Side of Paradise is actually the final installment of the Peachtree Bluff Series which focuses on a mother, Ansley and her three daughters: Caroline, Sloane and Emerson as they divide their time between New York City and Georgia. Each are struggling in terms of their relationships: Ansley is engaged to the love of a her, a man that she left when she was young while Caroline has discovered that her husband James has been cheating on her and Sloane is dealing with her injured husband who is back from being captured during the war.
There is nothing easy about writing historical fiction. Once a writer adds art into the mix, the project becomes something entirely different as many artists, especially those like Vincent Van Gogh are not so easily defined. Furthermore, having the ability to blend factual art historical information with the fiction a writer creates, is difficult and can often produce novels that are more of a creation as opposed to a well-researched, factual backdrop with a fictional story also added for entertainment.
Kevin Nance of Booklist describes Houpt’s book through the following angle, “when houses like Sotheby’s trumpet their sales records – $104 million for a Picasso! – what’s a self-respecting art thief to do? In this brief and lively book, Houpt laments the transformation of art into an international commodity and sketches a series of quick portraits of famous latter-day art thieves and the intrepid detectives who try to catch them. In a few cases, Houpt has already been outpaced by events. Munch’s The Scream, stolen from a Norwegian museum in 2004, was recently recovered, and the Picasso sales record was eclipsed this year by the sale of a Klimt (once looted by the Nazis) for a reported $135 million.”
When I was in my early 20’s, I broke up with my high school/college sweetheart and packed up my life for a semester abroad in Paris. I am all about books that take me back to Paris, especially those that are about a newly single woman navigating her new world in one of the world’s most beautiful cities. I was so excited when I received the galley for Sarah Morgan’s One Summer in Paris.
, is a period in art history where the mature El Greco and the young Velazquez flourished.The court of Phillip III “ushered in a time of elaborate celebrations and religious festivals, a major expansion in new building, and an unprecedented rage for art collecting in the Spanish court. Spain’s art became more naturalistic and expressive; the royal portraits are masterpieces of detailed elegance, and the religious figures have reality and solidity new to the genre,” according to the School Library Journal.
When the British painter, 
Primitivism is an area within art history that is most famously associated with artist Paul Gauguin. He often traveled to tropical areas such as Tahiti where he believed that he was observing primitive cultures that were untouched by the modern world. Largely, this was not the case, but in turn, Gauguin along with many artists who followed, began to paint native people in a basic, unassuming way.
Katherine Kuzma-Beck 