TITLE: ⟫ Honey Bee Murder
AUTHOR: ⟫ Dahlia Donovan
RATING: ⟫ 2.5/5
SERIES: ⟫ Honey Bee Cosy Mysteries
BLURB: ⟫ George Bernard Sheth plans to spend July in the garden with his beloved pug, Bumble. He’s tending to his bees when a neighbour harasses him quite vocally. When the man winds up dead, all eyes are immediately on George and the many hives in his garden.
Murphy Baird knows without a doubt George wouldn’t harm a fly or a bee or an obnoxious rich businessman. He balances keeping his brewery going with trying to help solve the murder and preparing for the upcoming Highland Games. It’s not made any easier by the impending visit from his father.
As the mystery deepens, they find themselves not knowing quite who to trust.
Can they find the killer before George winds up arrested for murder?
REVIEW: ⟫ I should preface this by saying that I didn’t realise that there was a book one. Once I realised that, I had to accept that I might be a little on the back foot with regards to the characters and dived in.
Not having read the first book was not much of a hindrance with regard to the characters – it’s made very clear who everyone is, how they’re related to everyone. The main character of George is neurodivergent, and this plays quite the role in his interactions with other people. It was quite heartening the way that the people around George understood the limitations he was under, supporting him in whatever way was necessary – there was quite the vein of love and affection that played out throughout the story.
The murder mystery was a little weak – simply the fact that George has bees should not really have made him a suspect. As George opines slightly dramatically, how is he meant to ‘control his bees’? I understood that the police had to investigate all claims but it just seemed a bit too exaggerated – at least in my opinion. Also, it wasn’t so much that I couldn’t tell who had committed the murder in that I didn’t care, which isn’t a great sign in a murder mystery romance.
I also felt that there was very little romance in the story. George and Murphy are a newly established couple and I expected more demonstrations of affection. I didn’t feel very much chemistry between the two male leads and there was no sex scenes to speak of. Murphy made little to no impression at all – he was the vague representation of a big, solid, protective male who was very involved in his brewery and loved his parents/family and George. Apart from that, I feel like I learned more about the pug, Bumble, than I did Murphy. It made his character more than a little one-dimensional and that was a shame.
My overall impression of this book is that it reminded me very much of an episode of a slow, easy, country life-style mystery along the lines of Murder She Wrote – easy viewing for everyone but nothing about it was particularly memorable. The writing itself was stilted and didn’t flow as easily as it might but I’m not sure if that was meant to be a representation of George or was simply the writer’s style.
If you’re looking for an easy, comfort read without little to no spice and a side-plot murder mystery, I can see people enjoying this book. I received an ARC from GRR.
