I’m going to have to start this review by admitting that I don’t believe in fairies. Not the cute little ones who flutter around flowers in the garden type, anyway, which is the kind who feature in this series of cozy mysteries. And honestly, this struck me as a book about fairies which happened to have a mystery in it, rather than a mystery that happens to have fairies in it. By the end, I could barely recall anything about the murder victim other than that she seemed to have been an awful person and half the town seemed to have a motive to kill her.
The mystery honestly seemed fairly simple, but there was an incredible amount of filler. We got intimate descriptions of about 20 - I didn’t count exactly, but it can’t have been many less than that - fairy gardens being built, a whole separate sub-plot about a character whose daughter had joined a cult which seems to be a setup for a future book, and a great many occasions where Courtney took her cat absolutely everywhere, including to the beach. Yes, her CAT. To a beach where complete strangers had dogs off the leash. My suspension of belief failed even harder at that than all the fairy stuff, I’m afraid.
I’m afraid I found this just too twee for words. Our heroine Courtney is practically perfect in every way; she also comes across as a self-righteous busybody, dobbing in everyone she sees doing anything remotely ‘naughty’ to the police as a potential murder suspect. It’s no wonder she’s confronted several times by angry (innocent!) people telling her to keep her nose out of their business, which of course does not stop her continuing to stick her nose into everyone’s business. A large cast of characters, the vast majority of whom seemed to have alliterative names (which was a weird choice), made it difficult for me to remember who was who, even with the cast list at the front of the book - it’s hard to flip back to refer to that in an ebook.
Frankly, this was a lot of waffle and I found myself utterly bored by it. Two stars.
Disclaimer: I received a review copy of this title via NetGalley.