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familiar_diversions's review
2.0
Lark Drummond is a partner in the business that supplies coffee to her luxury hotel, as well as a friend of the owner, Esther, so it's a surprise when she learns that Esther has cancelled all of the hotel's current and future coffee orders. The timing is particularly terrible - the hotel has completely run out of coffee and is currently hosting a birding convention - so Lark heads over to Esther's cafe to figure out what's going on.
She doesn't get a chance to talk to Esther much, but she does witness an argument between Esther and Teresa, the 18-year-old daughter of one of the Mexican coffee growers Esther works with. She decides to save her questions for a better time, and unfortunately never gets a chance to ask them at all. While out bird watching, Lark witnesses someone stab Esther to death.
This is an unusual cozy mystery series in that all or most of the books star different characters. The characters do seem to have intertwining relationships and interactions, so I felt like I missed out on a little by not having read the first book, but overall it wasn't too difficult a series to jump into.
That said, it didn't really work for me. I learned a bit about coffee and why, if you care about birds and the environment, it's so important for coffee to not only be organic but also shade-grown. The book also worked in information about illegal immigration and bird watching.
Unfortunately, this was the most boring cozy mystery I'd read in a while. I didn't particularly care about any of the characters, and the mystery itself wasn't terribly interesting. Lark was a bit of an idiot, telling the book's top murder suspects the location of a ledger that almost certainly contained an important clue, and as annoying as her one staff member, Stephen Velof, was, he seemed to have a better handle on the hotel, its atmosphere, and the rules it was bound by than Lark. Lark seemed more dedicated to bird watching than to her hotel.
I can't really speak to the accuracy of the bird watching aspects. I didn't think they were particularly exciting, but I was at least semi-interested in the red-face warbler sightings: Colorado wasn't considered to be part of its range, so I wondered if the sightings would somehow be incorporated into the mystery. I maybe shouldn't have expected quite that much.
All in all, I'm glad to be done with this and don't plan on reading any other books in this series.
Additional Comments:
This book had an awful lot of typos - a character's name all in lowercase, "later" instead of "latter," etc. I wasn't impressed with the editing.
Extras:
A page about Wood Warblers and a page about the Migratory Bird Conservancy.
(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)
She doesn't get a chance to talk to Esther much, but she does witness an argument between Esther and Teresa, the 18-year-old daughter of one of the Mexican coffee growers Esther works with. She decides to save her questions for a better time, and unfortunately never gets a chance to ask them at all. While out bird watching, Lark witnesses someone stab Esther to death.
This is an unusual cozy mystery series in that all or most of the books star different characters. The characters do seem to have intertwining relationships and interactions, so I felt like I missed out on a little by not having read the first book, but overall it wasn't too difficult a series to jump into.
That said, it didn't really work for me. I learned a bit about coffee and why, if you care about birds and the environment, it's so important for coffee to not only be organic but also shade-grown. The book also worked in information about illegal immigration and bird watching.
Unfortunately, this was the most boring cozy mystery I'd read in a while. I didn't particularly care about any of the characters, and the mystery itself wasn't terribly interesting. Lark was a bit of an idiot, telling the book's top murder suspects the location of a ledger that almost certainly contained an important clue, and as annoying as her one staff member, Stephen Velof, was, he seemed to have a better handle on the hotel, its atmosphere, and the rules it was bound by than Lark. Lark seemed more dedicated to bird watching than to her hotel.
I can't really speak to the accuracy of the bird watching aspects. I didn't think they were particularly exciting, but I was at least semi-interested in the red-face warbler sightings: Colorado wasn't considered to be part of its range, so I wondered if the sightings would somehow be incorporated into the mystery. I maybe shouldn't have expected quite that much.
All in all, I'm glad to be done with this and don't plan on reading any other books in this series.
Additional Comments:
This book had an awful lot of typos - a character's name all in lowercase, "later" instead of "latter," etc. I wasn't impressed with the editing.
Extras:
A page about Wood Warblers and a page about the Migratory Bird Conservancy.
(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)
plantbirdwoman's review
2.0
Lark Drummond is the owner of a luxury hotel in Elk Park, Colorado, and is also the silent partner in a coffee shop enterprise, until one day she witnesses through a birding scope her partner, Esther, being murdered on the parking lot of the shop. From that point, Lark loses her silent status. She sets out to find out exactly what happened to Esther and why, and opens up a complicated can of worms concerning Mexican coffee growing and exporting and undocumented aliens from that part of the world. Stir in the participants of a birding convention that is in town and Lark has just about more than she can handle.
Goff manages to mix in some very useful information about the growing of coffee and how it relates to the health of the migratory songbird population. She explains why it is important for consumers to be aware of how their coffee is raised, and why, if they care about birds, they should only purchase shade-grown coffee. She also gives some sympathetic exposition to the plight of both the coffee growers and those who harvest the coffee beans.
Lark is a fairly believable and empathetic character. Goff seems to have a little better handle on her than she did on Rachel, her heroine in her first book. All in all, not a terrible effort, and now I'm going to move along to the third book in the series. These are short books and very quick reads.
Goff manages to mix in some very useful information about the growing of coffee and how it relates to the health of the migratory songbird population. She explains why it is important for consumers to be aware of how their coffee is raised, and why, if they care about birds, they should only purchase shade-grown coffee. She also gives some sympathetic exposition to the plight of both the coffee growers and those who harvest the coffee beans.
Lark is a fairly believable and empathetic character. Goff seems to have a little better handle on her than she did on Rachel, her heroine in her first book. All in all, not a terrible effort, and now I'm going to move along to the third book in the series. These are short books and very quick reads.
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