Customer Reviews

Farm Fresh Murder (A Farmers' Market Mystery)

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

There's a lot to love about this book. It's a new cozy with small town charm and enough farm fresh goodness to delight all fans of the genre. The jam lady, Becca, proves to be a strong female sleuth. She finds herself in sticky situations trying to solve the murder of the peach vendor. Secrets from the past have to be outed and someone wants to stop Becca before the jam thickens on the stove. In the end she lives to make preserves another day and preserve the market before it's too late. It's a strong story line, with well developed characters, and includes recipes from the farmers' market vendors. I highly recommend.

Terrific, fun read. Becca is a great character with a fascinating backstory. I hope the author continues this as a series; I'd love to learn more about the ex-husbands and get to meet the hippie parents!

This is such a good book! The characters, the plot, and the mystery are all well crafted. I couldn't put it down, and I wish more mysteries had this kind of suspense. The writer's style is appealing and reminded me a little of Sue Grafton. I can't wait to read more about these characters. Highly recommended.

I loved this book. Hoping to read more in this series. Well written. Great story. Great setting. Solid storytelling and plot.

Becca Robins lives on a small farm with her dog Hobbit, raising berries and other vegetables for preserves and jams which she sells every weekend at Bailey's Farmer's Market, which is run by her twin sister Allison. One Saturday morning Becca arrives late, only to discover there has been a murder--one of the other sellers has been killed with an axe--and the main suspect is her friend and fellow seller Abner Justen, a cantankerous old coot who, despite his personality, treats Becca like a daughter.

As always happens in cozies, Becca, convinced of Abner's innocence, gets involved in the investigation. There are several suspects, mostly people she works with, including a sexy guy Becca would like to get to know better, and the straitlaced police officer investigating the crime also provides a spark of romance within the investigation. Despite all this, I didn't feel as if the characters were ever fully fleshed. Becca's likable enough, but she never crossed the line to "real person" to me, and her relationships with sexy Ian and sober Sam reminds me eerily of the Maggie/Marcus/Tom triangle in Madelyn Alt's Bewitching series. The ending, in which Becca confronts the murderer, is quite suspenseful and adds to my rating a bit, but I'm not sure if I will read any more of these. Becca's dog is cute, though. :-)

Becca Robins is making blackberry jam at her farm she shares with Hobbit the dog when her sister calls. Allison manages Bailey's Farmers Market where Becca sells her jams and jellies. She asks her sibling to come over immediately so Allison does. The police are there as is the corpse of Matt Simonson, who to the shock of the vendors was murdered.

Becca fails to recognize Matt because as Allison explains to her he just started working there. Allison further says that her best friend Abner is the prime suspect because they had a loud public argument, a bouquet made from his flowers is on the dead body and he has vanished. Later Abner calls Becca pleading with her not to investigate, but she refuses to abide by his request. Becca interviews other vendors, which leads to her putting the puzzle pieces together and placing herself in danger from a killer observing her every move.

The first farmer's Market Mystery is a fine and riveting amateur sleuth mystery with more suspects than Abner has flowers in a bouquet. Besides a strong heroine who refuse to believe her friend is a killer, the support cast is superb as they bring out what goes on behind the scenes of a Farmer's Market environ while enhancing the investigation. Putting aside the sub-genre's recipe of placing the amateur sleuth who is already questionable as a detective in deadly peril, fans will enjoy Farm Fresh Murder as Becca determined and intrepid seeks the killer.

Harriet Klausner

Becca owns a berry and pumpkin-producing farm in South Carolina, where she makes jams and preserves to sell at the local farmers' market. Becca is a realistic, down to earth character, who is loyal to her family, friends, and dog. She quickly becomes interested in the murder of one of her fellow produce sellers, and eagerly seeks out to discover the perp. The plot is well-developed,plausible, and moves along at a fast clip. I particularly enjoyed the well-developed characters and the detailed (but not annoyingly so) descriptions of the countryside and the farmers' market activities. There is the start of one, possibly two, romantic relationships, which, will hopefully, be further explored in a future book. I enjoyed the book, until I got about three quarters through it, and then I was able to determine who had committed the murder. Bummer. Nevertheless, I would recommend it for a fun read. Great recipes, by the way.

This story has well developed characters and a charming country backdrop. I hope the same cast returns for the next two volumes as I'm dying to see where the new relationships go and how the old friends pull together (or fall apart) in light of the shocking revelations at the end.

This book is a fine beginning to what I hope is great new cozy series. Becca is a fun and interesting character with great potential. She has fine qualities, loyalty, common sense and a great work ethic. For the most part, I really enjoyed the pace, setting, plotting and characterizations of this new cozy. The farmer's market is a great new place for a murder! However, there were a couple of things I didn't like in the book; one was the age difference between Becca and Ian. I would have less of a problem with it, if she was 45 and he was 35, but at 25 the situation is just a bit too much of a "boy toy" thing for me. Having a "cougar" for a progtagonist just doesn't go well with a cozy mystery main charater. I also agree with another reader that Becca does come off as a jam making "know it all" and a little arrogant in places. The mystery was not easy to solve, so that was good and I felt that the clues were developed in a logical and consistent way . I also enjoyed the relationship between Becca and her twin sister, it's loving, warm, and so supportive. The description of the farm and how Becca runs it was an added plus for me. All in all this a good first book in what I hope will be a fun series.

Becca Robins, preserve maker extraordinaire, arrives at Bailey's Farmers' Market to sell her goods one morning only to discover that customers might be a little put off by the atmosphere. A dead body and a bunch of police will do that though. Becca needs this murder solved quickly so that her sister doesn't lose her job, a close friend doesn't end up going to jail and she doesn't end up as the next victim.

It was very difficult for me to rate this book. What I enjoyed, I loved, and what I didn't care for, drove me absolutely crazy (expect some ranting but keep in mind these parts in the book were usually very short). I loved the farmers' market setting, it was a lot of fun and I loved everything it entailed (gardening, cooking etc). Some of my favorite parts of the book were simply reading about Becca getting her inventory ready or other ordinary occurrences. I felt that this was a great place to have a murder happen in.

Becca was a wonderful cozy mystery personality with an interesting voice. She was a lot funnier than I had been expecting. For the most part, I loved Becca... except when she was 'crime solving'. Whenever Becca attempted sleuthing I couldn't stand her. The writing in these parts became very repetitive too, to the point where it was distracting from the story. Becca would discover something and then we'd learn it all over again as she made note cards then again as she talked to herself then again when she shared her suspicions with other characters. At one point I honestly thought I might have accidentally been rereading pages. I like that Becca was a normal person and reacted like a normal person would to a murder. However, her reactions to 'tense' situations were too exaggerated and almost childlike. Becca at one point locks herself in her sister's office as she's sleuthing. Someone knocks on the door, who Becca assumes is just a customer, and Becca completely loses it in anxiety. You would have thought that she was instead locked in the office with the killer from the way she was acting. Becca is very independent, easy going, loves animals etc and if I ever met her, I'd probably want her as a best friend. My first order of business though would be to teach her that the 'sleuthing' solution to every unknown fact isn't blurting out the question to the suspect or just asking Officer Brion. There's a big difference between incompetence and whatever Becca was doing. Incompetent sleuthing can be amusing or used as a tool for character growth. Whatever Becca was doing was neither. Anyway, my point is that Becca was a perfect character until moments where the plot moved forward.

Because this book was primarily a cozy mystery, there wasn't much of what I loved most about that book. My absolutely favorite aspect of this book was the beginnings of an older woman and younger man relationship (Becca/Ian). It was glorious and perfectly written. Even if the last 75 pages of the book hadn't completely made up for my previous ranting, I would read the next book in the series just to see more of their budding relationship. The last 75 pages really did fix all of my complaints though. Literally not a single complaint I just ranted about appeared in those pages. I'm so glad that the murderer was a complete surprise too but also not so far out there that it would have been impossible to guess.

Despite my complaints that make this book sound worse than it really was, I did enjoy this book. I think if you know about its flaws before going into it, that you'll be able to enjoy the book more. I'm looking forward to the next book as well as trying out some yummy looking recipes from this one.