I am so giving away all of my other books by this author because the me that read the first one of these years and years ago is no longer the same person. I'm sitting here looking at my tbr stack, headed by stuff like Giles Blunt's Forty Words for Sorrow, Dennis Lehane's The Given Day, ummm, let's see...2 books by Natsuo Kirino, and I'm thinking that there's much more to life than Aunt Dimity. I'm not at all dissing anyone who reads cozy mysteries; au contraire -- I used to have stacks and stacks of them, and I'm sure if I was fully cognizant of what lies hidden in my bookshelves, I'd probably find some more. I'm just saying that this is no longer my cup of tea.
I'd forgotten why I quit reading cozy mysteries until I finished this one. Actually, I made myself finish it. I used to love this stuff a long time ago, but I think my tastes have changed.
In this second book of the Aunt Dimity series, Emma, a computer professional, has been left high and dry by her boyfriend who dumped her for someone younger. She decides to go on a series of garden tours, and she meets two elderly ladies who encourage her to visit Penford Hall in Cornwall. It seems that the owner of said hall is an acquaintance of theirs. So off she goes, and is promptly drafted into service to fix up the old and long-neglected garden. While there, she becomes embroiled in a mystery or two, and some very strange things happen.
Frankly, I didn't like it. The dialogue was just not realistic, nor were the characters. I'm all for a bit of the supernatural in a mystery novel, but this one was just way too cutesy for me. I know, I know, it rates high for lots of readers, but what can I say? So I'd recommend it to people who are into cozies, which I realize now that I'm definitely not.
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