The Final Arrangement (Book One of the Cozy Flower Shop Mysteries)

Author:  Annie Adams
Genre:   Mystery

Trade Paperback; Digital Book
ISBN #:  9781482314489
CreateSpace Publishing
304 Pages
$9.99; $0.99 Amazon
January 30, 2013

⭐⭐

Quincy McKay is ready for a fresh start.  Finally free of her good-for-nothing ex, she can't wait to grow her aunt's struggling small-town floral boutique.  But her hopes wither and die when her biggest competitor is found dead and she's accused of murder.

Teaming up with her blunt-speaking elderly friend, and a dreamy cop, Quincy desperately digs for clues to prove she didn't do it.  But her mother's gossip network and the return of her crazy ex threaten to blight her investigation.

Can Quincy unearth the culprit, or will she be buried along with her business?

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First off, I have to say that I absolutely hate it when the blurb is misleading.  Her "blunt-speaking elderly friend" doesn't show up until almost two-thirds of the book is gone, and her ex never makes an appearance.  So there's that...

Anyway, I picked up this book in a weak moment, hoping to really enjoy it, but it almost lost me on the first page when I read that she runs her aunt's floral shop but the air conditioning broke.  It's a floral shop.  No air conditioning.  I can only conclude that there were no floral displays anywhere about, including in the windows, since they would be complete trash, but she only mentions a few wilted leaves.  Where are the window displays?  Where are the flowers inside the shop when you walk in?  Every floral shop I've been to has flowers and plants everywhere, so you can browse.  But apparently all this one had is a few dead leaves.  There's no mention of having to throw out everything and calling someone to get the air conditioning working again.  Little details add up to big improvements.

It's difficult to really like Quincy at all.  I get that she has an abusive ex (so do I) but I never went around believing every man was like my ex-boyfriend.  I never treated all men like they were devil's spawn and should be avoided at every cost.  Quincy has a chip on her shoulder so large she must walk lopsided.  She never lets anyone into her personal space, not even her family.  She's walled herself away.  It's not a good look for anyone.  It's an especially bad look for the protagonist of a book.  You want to like that person, not wish you'd never started the book.

Quincy treats Alex - an inherently nice guy - like he's some monster, and even when he shows time and again that he really likes her, she pushes him away or imagines reasons why he hasn't called.  She's not even willing to give him a chance to explain.  Instead, when she discovers the truth, she'd rather feel like a royal ass and beat herself up mentally.  Yeah, that's healthy.

She also had an employee named Cindy that she should have gotten rid of in the first chapter of the book.  What an annoying, idiotic, narcissistic little twit; and her sister Allie is dumber than a box of rocks when it comes to her boyfriend, even though she must have known Quincy's past.  You'd think she'd have seen the similarities, but this woman either just ignored it or was brain-dead from being knocked around.

Then there's her mother:  Oh, dear.  Her mother is single-minded in the fact that she doesn't want her daughters to be single.  At all.  Even if it means they should be married to abusers, men who beat them up on a regular basis.  WTF?  Was she even concerned with Allie's well-being (until the end)?  Then, when Quincy does (reluctantly) find someone, her mother criticizes her choice and wants her to find someone she chooses, even if that someone lives in his mother's basement and plays video games all day.  Who is this woman???

Then, her mother, for some odd reason, has 'friends' who feel it's their "duty" to notify her of everything Quincy is doing.  Who wants a gaggle of busybodies as their friends?  Haven't they got their own lives to lead?  Also, why would Quincy tolerate this?  Personally, I would let it be known in no uncertain terms that what I did with my life was my own business.  Her mother's friends should worry about their own families instead of gossiping about someone else's.  What business is it of theirs, anyway, if she's out dining with someone who orders a beer?  (Mormons should be offended by this behavior, since it really puts them in a bad light.)  It also bothered me that a pointed question was made as to Mormons and premarital sex.  I hate to tell the author this, but I don't know of any religion (at least mainstream) that pushes premarital sex.  So the question shouldn't even have been made in the first place.  It was superfluous to the story.

I'm not saying there weren't some humorous situations, which was the saving grace of the book.  I found a few passages funny, but it wasn't enough to save the rest of it.  Quincy wanted to do everything on her own, and resisted help at every turn.  She'd been in an abusive relationship, but didn't think that she might find herself in a tight bind somewhere, so never told anyone where she was going - which was stupid.

I didn't get why she was a murder suspect when they had no proof she committed a murder.  Who would put their own flower spray on the top of a casket of a person they murdered?  There was no connection whatsoever between herself and Derrick, and the worst is, there were plenty of people with a connection to the man that had reason to hate him enough to want him dead, but not a single one was suspected in his murder.  Not.  One.  How much sense does that make?

There isn't really a lot of character development.  I never felt anything for Allie one way or another (and I should have, considering the situation); K.C. seemed abrasive and should have been given a softer edge; Quincy's mother was the worst example of a mother I've read in a long time; Alex was truly decent, but wasn't really given anything much to do except save Quincy; and Quincy had an attitude a mile long that didn't endear her to me at all.  The town was full of corrupt people who didn't seem to care that they were corrupt, and I must presume for the most part got away with it since we were never told if anything was done about it.

I also expected the two story lines to be connected somehow, but they never were.  (That of her sister's domestic abuse and the murder).  Usually in cozies, when there are two story lines, they come together in such a way that one actually would expect Allie's boyfriend Brad to be the murderer and trying to pin it on Quincy...but he wasn't.  So, yeah.  I also didn't understand why Quincy went into Brad's house when he told her to.  He didn't have a weapon, and she could have just either 1) screamed bloody murder until someone noticed; 2) kicked him in the family jewels and left; 3) used the pepper spray that K.C. gave her; or 4) K.C. could have come back and hit him with the Enforcer - but didn't (which makes me wonder why.  Three women against one unarmed man?)  In other words, Quincy talks big about being able to take care of herself but can't.  Why would she just allow herself to be led back knowing she was going to be knocked around?

I understand that there is a niche out there for self-published books.  However, I don't read them often, and this book is a prime example of why.  Many of them might have good writing, but I'm a big believer in details, and they just aren't there (as I've mentioned many times above).  Things that should be explained aren't, and things that aren't relative to the story are added.  Was this a mystery that added domestic abuse to keep from losing the reader?  Because it had nothing to do with the murder, as one would think.  Have a subplot, by all means; but also, have that subplot tie into the original mystery.  And for heaven's sake, tie up the loose ends.

At the end, there were no clues leading to the identity of the murderer, which was discovered when the murderer just blurted it out.  I always think the reader is cheated when there are no clues leading to the murderer.  I don't expect an author to just tell us at the beginning who 'did the deed.' but I do expect the author to at least allow us to try and solve the murder along with the protagonist.  In this case, everyone - including Alex, a police officer - was completely clueless.  Not a single person even thought it, not a single clue lead to it.  It's a cheat, and disappointing.  It could have been better, but wasn't.

https://www.amazon.com/Final-Arrangement-Cozy-Flower-Mystery/dp/1482314487/ref

Goodreads:  https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2971335767

https://www.fantasticfiction.com/a/annie-adams/