Author: Ellen Crosby
Published: April 6th 2021 by Severn House Publishers
Format: Kindle, Hardcover, 256 Pages
Genre: Mystery
Source: My thanks to Netgalley and the Publisher for an opportunity to read an advanced copy of this book.
Series: Wine Country Mysteries #11
I’m used to the Wine Country series having a more factual history to go along with the murder mystery and wine parings. With this outing, I was put off with the history premise based on a made-up affair between Jacqueline Bouvier and Lucie Montgomery’s grandfather, taking place in 1949 France, when Jacqueline was spending a year abroad.
By presuming an affair, which brought the timeline together and incorporating the Montgomery Vineyards patriarch, then adding in paintings found in old bookseller’s drawers, allows for Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun and her canvases, to be brought center stage. A stage quickly moved to the background when Harriet Delacrox, a failed journalist, plans to hold a gathering to present the book she is writing based on a manuscript about Marie-Antoinette and her portraitist that Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis had left in a box given to Harriet’s mother. This manuscript coincides with journals Lucie found which calls into question her grandfather’s love for her grandmother and a secret that should remain hidden.
Because the book, in my mind, had a cohesion issue, it felt as if the author was halfway through before she realized she forgot a murder victim and threw in a celebrated landscape designer, who was also a contemporary of Miss Bouvier, and killed him off. Was it because he threatened to call Harriet out on her ridiculous book or is there more since Lucie’s sister has a new beau and said landscaper thought he looked slightly familiar or could it be that he had publicly called out a local botanist about his research on climate change and its effect on viticulture? The murder part of this mystery was a jumbled mess from beginning to end.
In my opinion, too much was going on in this book. So much so that each of the storylines was swallowed up by another and what is left was too many ideas and not enough development of any of them.
By presuming an affair, which brought the timeline together and incorporating the Montgomery Vineyards patriarch, then adding in paintings found in old bookseller’s drawers, allows for Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun and her canvases, to be brought center stage. A stage quickly moved to the background when Harriet Delacrox, a failed journalist, plans to hold a gathering to present the book she is writing based on a manuscript about Marie-Antoinette and her portraitist that Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis had left in a box given to Harriet’s mother. This manuscript coincides with journals Lucie found which calls into question her grandfather’s love for her grandmother and a secret that should remain hidden.
Because the book, in my mind, had a cohesion issue, it felt as if the author was halfway through before she realized she forgot a murder victim and threw in a celebrated landscape designer, who was also a contemporary of Miss Bouvier, and killed him off. Was it because he threatened to call Harriet out on her ridiculous book or is there more since Lucie’s sister has a new beau and said landscaper thought he looked slightly familiar or could it be that he had publicly called out a local botanist about his research on climate change and its effect on viticulture? The murder part of this mystery was a jumbled mess from beginning to end.
In my opinion, too much was going on in this book. So much so that each of the storylines was swallowed up by another and what is left was too many ideas and not enough development of any of them.
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