The Bruised Bud by Jody Chaffin
A Larkspur Hollow Garden Club Mystery, Book 6
Publisher: Self-Published
Genre: Cozy Mystery, Contemporary
Rating: 3 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

Two hundred and fifty years of history. Twenty minutes nobody can account for.
Larkspur Hollow has been waiting a long time for this spring. The village turns two hundred and fifty years old, and the Garden Club has poured everything it has into an anniversary Flower Show worth the number.

Then Margot Hartwell — the last of the Hartwells, the woman whose money was quietly remaking the valley — walks out to hundreds of people on the green, says something no two witnesses will ever agree on, and dies on the grass in front of all of them.

Six people had a reason. Only one had the twenty minutes.

Retired schoolteacher, master gardener, and reluctant detective Nell Ashworth has worked five of these now. She has never had one where the whole village was watching and nobody saw a thing.

Feelings aren’t facts, right?

Some of my favorite passages were the ones that showed how Larkpur Hollow had grown as a community since it was first introduced in The Buried Bloom. This included everything from buildings that had recently been upgraded to new people who had moved into this area and so much more. While all of the books in this series do work perfectly well as standalone stories, I’d recommend reading them in publication order because of how much I enjoyed not only getting to know the characters but also reaching this point in their lives where the events of the past coalesce together to make their permanent mark on this town. It was satisfying to nod along and reminisce a little as I compared the beginning to what I assume is the final instalment.

It would have been helpful to have more development of the mystery itself. As much as I enjoyed the subplots, the main storyline felt a little underwhelming to me due to the murderer’s motivation for their crime and what happened to them after they were discovered. This is something I’m saying as a reader who had a good time with this series in general and was hoping for a little bit more conflict before saying goodbye to the characters.

I liked what this book had to say about why some people resist change and why that resistance doesn’t always have the effect one might hope it will. Change isn’t always a good thing, of course, but it tends to happen whether or not a community feels ready for it. The philosophical trend of these portions suited the storyline well, especially as the murder investigation deepened and characters began sharing some of the most important clues about what happened.

The Bruised Bud was thoughtful.

The Blighted Bough by Jody Chaffin
A Larkspur Hollow Garden Club Mystery, Book 3
Publisher: Self-Published
Genre: Cozy Mystery, Contemporary
Rating: 3 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

One golden harvest. One rotten secret. Forty-eight puzzles to the truth.

The apples are in and the whole of Larkspur Hollow has turned out for the Harvest Festival — the cider press running, the Green strung with lanterns. Then, on the second morning, Hal Bradley is found dead in the cider cellar. Everyone agrees it was a terrible accident: a careless man, a cellar full of working cider, one bad breath of air. Retired schoolteacher Eleanor “Nell” Ashworth is the only one still asking who put him there.

But this time, the detective is you.

Each chapter hands you a scene and a word search. Solve the puzzle, and the leftover letters reveal a hidden clue — a suspect cleared, a motive exposed, a secret the harvest was never meant to give up. Track them across forty-eight puzzles and you’ll be ready to name the killer, the motive, the means, and the place before Nell does.

No one can outrun the past.

As mentioned in my reviews of the first two stories in this series, I have previously had trouble with the limited character development in this universe. This is something I’m sharing yet again because I’m beginning to see signs of change in this area and I wanted to tip my cap to the author for this. While there’s still work to do as far as making the character well rounded goes, I did feel like I was able to get to know them better in the third instalment and am looking forward to seeing how they grow and change in the future as a result of living in a community where murders happen so regularly.

I struggled with the killer’s motivation this time around. It didn’t seem serious enough to warrant such a violent action, especially given how easy it would be to either hide what this person didn’t want to have revealed or to find people in town who would sympathize with them and not think of it as a scandalous thing in the modern age. As much as I wanted to give this one a higher rating, my difficulty understanding why the antagonist behaved this way was an obstacle to doing so.

With that being said, I loved the historical information about the 1920s and 1930s that was included about how certain parcels of land in this community were used back then. While all of the scenes were set in present day, the past influenced the characters in all sorts of creative ways. This is something that happens in real life fairly regularly as well across a wide variety of topics, so it was cool to see it represented in fiction.

The Blighted Bough was thoughtful.

The Buried Bloom by Jody Chaffin
A Larkspur Hollow Garden Club Mystery, book 1
Publisher: Self-Published
Genre: Cozy Mystery, Contemporary
Rating: 3 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

Thirty years buried. Forty-eight puzzles to the truth.

“Could such an interactive combination truly work? The answer is a resounding ‘Yes.'” — C.R. Hurst for Readers’ Favorite, 5 Stars

In the village of Larkspur Hollow, Vermont, everyone agreed that Cora Whitaker ran off in disgrace the summer of 1995. Everyone was wrong. Now her body has been found beneath the roses she once tended — and retired schoolteacher Eleanor “Nell” Ashworth is the only one still asking who put her there.

But this time, the detective is you.

Each chapter hands you a scene and a word search. Solve the puzzle, and the leftover letters reveal a hidden clue — a suspect cleared, a motive exposed, a secret the Hollow buried right alongside Cora. Track them across forty-eight puzzles and you’ll be ready to name the killer, the motive, the weapon, and the place before Nell does.

Six suspects. One garden full of secrets. A verdict only you can reach.

A complete solve-along mystery — no apps required. Just you, a pencil, and forty-eight word searches that build to a single solution. Perfect for cozy-mystery lovers and puzzlers alike.

Sharpen your pencil. Larkspur Hollow is waiting.

Unlike some plants, secrets can bloom anywhere.

It made me smile to see how small town politics played out in this mystery. While it isn’t strictly required to know about such things in advance, there were a few fun references to this cultural experience tucked here and there for those of us who have either grown up in such communities or who have other close ties to them. I was especially amused by the complex relationships between characters who had known each other for thirty years and sometimes much longer than that. They rang true and made this an even more engrossing read for me.

The limited amount of character and plot development was what ultimately lead me to choose a three-star rating. As much as I enjoyed solving the word-search puzzles at the end of every chapter and narrowing down my list of suspects, among other aspects of this case, there simply wasn’t much space for developing the characters or including as many plot twists as I was hoping to see. This is something I’m saying as someone who was excited to pick this book up and was hoping to give it a much higher rating. The framework for a potential five-star read was there, it simply needed to be fleshed out in order for me to feel justified in giving that rating.

With that being said, I loved the amount of audience participation that the author expected of his readers. This was the kind of tale that needed my full attention not only while I was in the middle of a chapter but also while I was writing down the clues and solving the word search puzzles. It was such a unique way to draw readers in and make this one feel as though I was playing an integral role in solving the case.

The Buried Bloom was an intriguing start to a new series.