fun light series ( )

About the same as the other books in this series, but the plot just wasn't up to snuff. Light, fun reading. A likable character who just seems to have murders going on around her. This one might have been a bit more complex & better EXCEPT ======== Spoiler Alert ==========I thought the cover was a spoiler & it was! That's just wrong. I don't usually put spoilers in reviews, but this was just so blatant. The cover shows Aurora standing in front of a pool. The character who is murdered is her SIL who doesn't have a pool, but her next door neighbor does & we find out early that she has something to gain from the murder. It's prestige & the clock is ticking, so it does make sense, although the culminating scene doesn't really. It's one of those 'confess to all & then murder' endings. Yuck. I expected better from Harris. There are a lot of smoke screens put up, but it's fairly obvious that's all they are. ( )

Several installments back Aurora Teagarden's mother--the imposing Aida Brattle Teagarden--married John Queensland and, in addition to adding one more surname to her already impressive list, added two stepsons and their wives. At the beginning of Poppy Done to Death the brutally murdered body of one of these stepsisters-in-law--the flamboyant Poppy--is found by poor Roe, who has a knack for finding these things. Yes, some people find lost keys, some find lost pets, Aurora Teagarden finds dead bodies.

Poppy and her husband, it turns out, had a shockingly open marriage (for small town Georgia, at least), but still: why would anyone want to kill her? Roe is aided in her sleuthing this time around by her other step sister-in-law, the more conventional Melinda. They learn some truly scandalous things about Poppy (and, it must be added, about several of the male characters, major and minor, we've gotten to know over the course of this series). And guess what--Roe actually solves this mystery, unlike in the past when she's really just stumbled upon the right answer by happenstance. Way to go Roe!

In other news, I'm happy to report that Roe's relationship with ridiculously named writer Robin Crusoe is in full swing. There's an interesting side story involving her half brother Phillip, a fifteen year old who hasn't been seen since their father took him to live in California at the end of the first book. And there's some aw-shucks life-affirming stuff at the end.

The Aurora Teagarden series is always lovely and always satisfying, and Charlaine Harris doesn't disappoint this time around. ( )

http://www.cozylibrary.com/default.as... ( )

This was a very satisfying conclusion to the series. As we did in Last Scene Alive, we continue to see a gentler and more personal side of Aurora, and her budding and promising relationship with Robin. After Roe's mother, Aida, married John Queensland earlier in the series, we didn't hear very much about his family or children, just a brief mention here or there. But in this book, we now learn that Roe has begun to feel close to her extended family: John, his two sons, Avery and John David, their wives, Melinda and Poppy, and their kids, who call her Auntie Roe. :)

Unfortunately, it's one of these new relations, specifically Roe's stepsister-in-law Poppy who winds up dead on the floor. And it's Roe and Melinda who find her there. But the incident brings forth a whole lot of dirt on Poppy with regards to the fact that her and John David's marriage was anything but monogamous. And for that reason, there are actually several suspects to her death, which was most definitely murder.

Roe is determined to save her stepfather from further grief, and a possible relapse of his earlier heart attack, so she's doing everything she can to help the police piece together the necessary clues to solve the crime as soon as possible, with the least amount of upset to the family as possible. Though sad and touching in that this death directly affects Roe and her family, from the darkness comes the light, and some things are learned that will help everyone in the long run. And so the series ends... *sniff sniff* I will certainly miss Aurora, and hope to see her make a cameo appearance now and then in some of Charlaine Harris' other series.

NOTE: Fans of Charlaine Harris who haven't yet read the Aurora Teagarden series will be happy to know that they are being re-released by Berkley. So they should no longer be so hard to find. Look for them at Amazon or wherever you buy or trade books. ( )