From the Bookshelf of Aussie Readers…

A Scone to Die For (Oxford Tearoom Mysteries #1)

H.Y. Hanna

Start date: October 1, 2020

Finish date: October 31, 2020

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Jun 09, 2019 Brenda rated it really liked it

Shelves: first-in-a-series, aussie-authors, cosy-mystery, read-on-kindle, 2016-release, own-read

The obnoxious American tourist who’d given Gemma and her best friend Cassie trouble in Gemma’s tearoom the day before was dead outside her shop when she arrived for work in the morning and he had a scone stuffed in his mouth. When Detective Devlin O’Connor appeared to lead the case, Gemma was shocked to see the man she’d given her heart to eight years prior. But would he be able to discover who had killed the man before the tearooms had to close for good? Gemma decided she needed to speed the in ...more

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Jan 17, 2023 Bree T rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: mystery, series, cozy, kindle-unlimited

Sometimes you just need something comforting and this series was recommended to me as a good cozy option by Tien after we finished A Little Life. And look, after reading A Little Life, cozy options were required.

This has everything that sounds like it’ll be a fun series: firstly, it’s set in Oxford and I just finished a very different book set there but it has a cool vibe. Also, the main character owns and operates a tearoom and I love tea (and cakes) so anything containing that and any descript Sometimes you just need something comforting and this series was recommended to me as a good cozy option by Tien after we finished A Little Life. And look, after reading A Little Life, cozy options were required.

This has everything that sounds like it’ll be a fun series: firstly, it’s set in Oxford and I just finished a very different book set there but it has a cool vibe. Also, the main character owns and operates a tearoom and I love tea (and cakes) so anything containing that and any descriptions? Fab. I also like cats and this seems like it’s going to have a long-running cat character as well.

Gemma Rose has left Sydney and her high-paying job behind to move back home to Oxford and open a tearoom in a renovated stables. It’s a very new business and she’s trying to build not just popularity with tourists, but also regular clientele. This is somewhat threatened when an obnoxious American who made a scene the previous day in the shop, is found dead outside. By Gemma herself. This also brings her former boyfriend, now a Detective Inspector, back into her life.

This was cute and a lot of fun – Gemma has found something that she enjoys, that gives her a different sort of life to the one she had in Sydney which was about climbing the corporate ladder and accumulating wealth and position and things. This is a disappointment to her mother though (who is honestly, one of the weaker things in the series, she’s mindnumbingly silly and the sort of ‘things would be so much better if you had a man, darling’) who wants her to find a ‘real job’ or better, get a husband and have some babies, because that’s all women are good for these days. Gemma is living with her parents as she sank all her savings (from her Sydney ‘penthouse’) into the tearoom and presumably, needs to wait a little until she is able to rent or buy something on her own. I’m guessing Oxford isn’t cheap either, so it might be a while which gives Gemma multiple opportunities to be late for dinner (cardinal sin), be seen wearing jeans (ditto) and avoid her mother’s attempts to set her up with “eligible” men.

I found the interactions between Gemma and Devlin interesting. It doesn’t seem like they’ve seen each other for a very long time and we know very little about their previous history other than that they dated, it was viewed to be serious and then ended. I’m hoping we get more information in future books as this was just the beginning and no point spilling everything right away. There’s definitely….something there though and I look forward to seeing what happens next. This is a pretty long series I think, this book was published seven years ago so I no doubt have quite a few to catch up on, which should be fun!
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