What can I say but that I absolutely loved this book. Everything about it just got me so wrapped up in Theo's Indigo Tea Shop and the mystery itself was intriguing in its' own little way I had to read this from cover to cover. Everything about it was just so "cozy". I loved the different descriptions about tea, and being a tea lover myself am now in the look out for new teas to try. Aside from the wonderful tea descriptions and the desserts that went along with it, the mystery was a fun read. Nothing too flashy and sensational. However there were proper moments of suspense and intrigue which kept the reader going and more engrossed to keep reading some more.

I loved the characters in the book. The suspects were believable and each had a motive for murder. I liked Theo and her staff at the tea shop who supported her through her investigation. They were all likable characters (although I found Drayton to be a particular favorite as he was the actual tea connoisseur). As for the real murderer and the solving of the case, I thought I had guessed correctly but I was blindsided and it wasn't who I expected it to be. There were a couple of questions I would like to have answered but I figured they would wait until the next book or two to see what would happen to certain characters I'm curious about. Plot flow was good and interesting. Nothing distracting to take away from the main theme. Theo is a great strong character and her determination to solve this case and save the reputation of her business and friend makes her even more likeable and noble.

Overall a wonderful mystery cozy! this will definitely be a series I will continue reading. I recommend this for cozy mystery lovers and tea aficionados alike. ( )

butterflybaby said most of it when it comes to plot or story telling. What is not mentioned is two things. How much this reads like fanfiction and further, how much of a self-insert Mary Sue this is.

I am very glad I did not pay full price for this drivel.

Theo is an elegant southern lady who after being in the grulling world of advertising decides to open her own Tea shop.
Theo becomes an amutuer slueth when one of her employees is made a suspect in the murder of a despised realotor. Theo ends up doing the work of feared Dect. Tidwell. In this story he just sits back and lets Theo bring the murderer to him. I enjoyed reading this story because it was like and easy to put down and pick up. ( )

I wanted to like it, because as an expatriate Southerner I dote nostalgically on books with Southern settings and a lot of local color. This one, with its cozy tea shop setting in historic Charleston, seemed like a sure thing. As a long-time armchair traveler, I didn't mind the travelogue aspects of the book and having never been to Charleston didn't know whether the descriptions were accurate or not. (Apparently not.) I love tea, and thought it might be interesting to learn more about it. (I gather that info is less than trustworthy, as well.) I didn't even particularly mind the shoddy characterizations, or the fact that Theo is a wish-fulfillment character whose life you want to have, rather than any conceivable actual person.

No, what put me off of going on with the series was the bad writing. The switches in point of view not only keep us from seeing the world through Theo's eyes, but also undermine any effort to create convincing characters. It is very jarring when it happens, and it jars every time it happens. It also contributes to the silliness quotient, because all too often the switch in point of view is for the sake of slathering more praise on the heroine. Childs also needs a lot of work on her diction. I suspected I was in for a long slog on line 6 of the book, when the hair that Theodosia pushed back couldn't be just curly, but had to be naturally curly, although I liked the image of a friendly Medusa. Childs is better with descriptions of scenery and weather (despite the overuse of adverbs, flowery adjectives, and clichés) than she is with her descriptions of human actions and emotions, which are almost invariably both clichéd and oddly off--choppy and abrupt in effect. And she badly needed an editor: in one place we are told that a character "wouldn't have not" done something when clearly what was meant was "wouldn't have" done it or "would not have" done it.

I also really didn't understand how Childs could describe arsenic as "undetectable" and death from arsenic-poisoning as sudden, since anyone who has ever read an arsenic mystery knows that it is one of the easiest poisons to detect and that death from arsenic-poisoning is rarely instantaneous. Usually it is an ugly and painful way to die, because it is so drawn out. Perhaps what she intended to say was that arsenic is tasteless when added to tea.

There is one other issue that bothered me in the book, an omission that I hope is corrected in later books of the series. I appreciate that cozies are in part a way of escaping from distressful reality (despite all those murders), but it's a pity that a book that is set in Charleston doesn't have a single character who is identifiable as African American. There is a self-congratulatory half-page in which we are told that Aunt Libby refuses to tear down the slave shacks on her plantation grounds because she doesn't want to make the truth of the Southern past invisible; that's the first mention of black folks in a book where present-day black Charlestonians are otherwise invisible. Now that's irony! Couldn't Haley be black? Or even the presumably gay Drayton? As it is, the book really does feel like the 1950s--as in whiter-than-white 1950s television. I'm not asking for true realism, just for adding a touch of the interracial New South to the cozy Southern setting. Otherwise, the books don't feel Southern at all.

A good read and you get some recipes to boot. ( )