Slay it with Flowers (Flower Shop Mystery, #2)

by Kate Collins

[layawaydragon]

Things that didn't make sense:
Why Abby said she was forgoing putting those harmful chemicals on her skin referring to bug spray but then it's said she was adamant advocate for using bug spray. Why diss something that you're supposedly bug shit crazy about using every time and bug everyone else to use it too?

The bigger issue that didn't make sense was a base premise of the story. Do you really think the leaders of an international sex ring is going to be so blatantly obvious? Do you really think they would branch out to a small town? Do you really think the sex ring leaders would be so stupid and make so many basic common sense mistakes? Like with the half-assed dumping of Abby's car a block away, and letting her untie herself. (Hey at least this time she was able to free herself, if not able to completely save herself.) Or like opening a Chinese restaurant as well where the waitress is so nice and tells Abby about the sex ring? Sure lock up the sex slaves but allow the waitresses who know all about the sex ring walk around talking free? Wait, how was one sex slave able to escape several times on her own in the first place? That was never explained and doesn't make a lick of sense considering how the author went on about them being locked up tight. Good lord, sex rings don't away with this stuff by being stupid. Clearly, the author knows nothing about sex rings except what's on TV and didn't think it through when using it in her story. It doesn't make any sense and it was frustrating.

Abby's tag line shouldn't be that she's not a meddler but should be "I just know!". Considering all the assumptions and jumping to conclusions that is justified by her gut in the book, this part of her personality propels the story more than her being nosy. It's rather convenient how she can see this behavior in other people "Hey wait we don't even know if a girlfriend exist yet!" but has no problem doing it all the time herself and resenting people when they point it out.

At least it wasn't continued that the police are all narrow minded corrupt stupid morons. Ok, so Abby is at the least still very wary of the police and justice system. With good reason, our system is indeed wrong. But it's nice that the part of the plot from the second book isn't repeated in this regard. It actually ended with Abby assuming the cops were doing nothing due to incompetence or corruption but it turned out that the FBI was handled so the cops had to stay off to not blow the operation. Abby did that instead. I agree that the system is fucked up but so much of this book is already predictable if it always turns out the cops are always stupid and at fault, it's going to tip the scales and make the series unbearable. I hope Abby at least learned something about jumping to conclusion from this experience.

All in all, a bit more annoying than the last book. Failures in common sense, plot holes, basic premise of the story are stupid/wrong and the main character harps on more of the same notes. Convenient save again at the end. The only real difference between this book and the last, is more kissing is involved. You can see where things go but in general enjoy the ride there anyways. It's a quick, light, fun read. (I say fun but not particularly funny. I chucked only a few times.) It is what it is, it's not a particularly bad cozy mystery, it's just not a very good one.