Early Reader Review: The Skeleton Garden by Marty Wingate

Source: I received The Skeleton Garden from Netgalley, Alibi, and the Chatterbox program in exchange for an honest review. This in no way alters my opinion or review.

The Skeleton Garden by Marty Wingate
Series: Potting Shed Mystery #4
Publisher: Alibi
Publication Date: March 15, 2016 

 

Format: Ebook


Rating:


 




Goodreads Synopsis:

USA Today bestselling author Marty Wingate’s Potting Shed series continues as expert gardener Pru Parke digs up a Nazi warplane—and a fresh murder.

Texas transplant Pru Parke has put down roots in England, but she never dreamed she’d live in a grand place such as Greenoak. When her former employers offer Pru and her new husband, former Detective Chief Inspector Christopher Pearse, the use of their nineteenth-century estate while they’re away for a year, she jumps at the chance. Sweetening the deal is the prospect of further bonding with her long-lost brother, Simon, who happens to be Greenoak’s head gardener. But the majestic manor has at least one skeleton in its closet—or, rather, its garden.

Working on renovations to the extensive grounds, siblings Pru and Simon squabble about everything from boxwood to bay hedges. But when the removal of a half-dead tree turns up the wreckage of a World War II–era German fighter plane and a pile of bones, the arguments stop. That is, until a rival from Simon’s past pays a surprise visit and creates even more upheaval. It’s suddenly clear someone is unhappy their secrets have been unearthed. Still, Pru’s not about to sit back and let Simon take the fall for the dirty deed without a fight.

Review:
The Skeleton Garden is the 4th book in a series about a gardener who seems to have bad things, i.e. bodies, turning up around her. And in this book there are actually a few. Pru, the main character is a gardener working with her older brother on the large garden of an English home, when they start digging up the yard to find out why a tree didn't grow, they come across a WWII plane and a skeleton. Not much later in the same hole another body appears and the town is excited to find out who committed the crime or if it was an accident.

This book had a very slow start, I have not read the first books in the series, so I really didn't have enough background about the characters to really feel for them - and even through the book, didn't really feel for them either. So it was hard to read. Yes the book picked up when the bodies started appearing and the investigations started but overall I was not feeling it.

I love a good mystery and this book did provide a few, which was nice, but not having connected with the characters I felt that something was missing for me. But like I said if you read the other books in the series, that may add to the connection with the characters that I did not have.