72. The Accidental Florist by Jill Churchill (Mystery) 209 p.
The Accidental Florist is the latest instalment in the Jane Jeffry mystery series. Like the others, it’s set in a suburb of Chicago, where Jane Jeffry is a widowed housewife, raising her three children and helping her cop boyfriend, Mel VanDyne, solve the occasional mystery. Now, after dating for so many years, Jane and Mel are about to tie the knot.
I liked this book well enough, but there wasn’t really any mystery in it. Mel works on a case, but it’s so easily solved it hardly seems to count, and Jane doesn’t get involved in it at all. I was always more interested in Jane’s life than in any of the crimes she solves, but the book was only about 200 pages. There could easily have been room for a real plot, or more depth added to the events that took place, if only the story had been expanded. There was also some name-dropping of people and products that I could have done without, but that’s something I rarely enjoy in any book.
Overall, this was a decent addition to the series, but only worth reading if you’ve already enjoyed some of the previous books and like the characters.
Pages read: 20,744
