Tucked away in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York is the charming town of Gracious Grove, where time moves slowly, gossip spreads quickly, and the scones are to die for..
When her fashionable Manhattan restaurant goes under, Sophie Taylor retreats to her grandmother's cozy shop, Auntie Rose's Victorian Tea House, where serenity is steeped to perfection in one of her many antiqued teapots. The last thing Sophie expects is a bustling calendar of tearoom events, like her old friend Cissy Peterson's upcoming bridal shower.
Not everyone is pleased with the bride-to-be's choice of venue, like Cissy's grandmother, who owns a competing establishment, La Belle Epoque, and has held a long simmering grudge against Rose for stealing her beau sixty years ago. Tensions reach a boiling point when Cissy's fiance's mother dies while sampling scones at La Belle Epoque. Now, to help her friend, Sophie will have to bag a killer before more of the guest list becomes a hit list.
I have a lot of mixed feelings about this book. There were a lot of parts I liked about it and there were also a lot of parts I disliked about it. I am willing to chalk it up to the fact that it's a "new in a series" and I will not be dismissing this series so easily. I liked the characters and I loved the close tight knit community the story takes place in. I do feel though, that it was a lot to take in the just the first novel. There are a lot of characters and if you don't pay attention it can get confusing at times as to whom everyone is related to. The beginning was a little slow for my taste but the middle was very gripping and had me gunning for the ending to figure out who really did it. When I got to the end though I was kind of bored with still trying to figure out who really did it. The big reveal at the end was not as exciting as I though it was going to be, and there weren't a lot of "aha" moments at all. I feel like the ending was drawn out a little too much when a little more should have been revealed slowly though out the whole book. So all in all, it wasn't my favorite but I am willing to give the series another shot.
