Book 89, 2022

Put Out to Pasture by Amanda Flower

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



After cleaning house today, I finished reading Put Out to Pasture by Amanda Flowers. It's the second book in the "Farm to Table" cozy mystery series, told in first-person pov by main character Shiloh Bellamy.

After leaving LA and returning home to Michigan to save the family farm, Shiloh is barely scraping by. She used up all of her savings just to get the farm out of hock, and her dream of growing organic food and opening a farm-to-table restaurant is still in the planning stages. For now, Shiloh is concentrating on needed repairs, convincing her curmudgeonly father to let her run the farm the way she wants, and dealing with a potential rival for her fledgling business. The Farm Daze festival that Shiloh holds on the farm is a huge help, until a woman is found murdered near the scarecrow and the evidence points to Shiloh's friend, Kristy. Determined to clear Kristy's name and salvage her farm's reputation, Shiloh butts into the investigation, much to the chagrin of the local chief of police. Shiloh isn't one to back down, however, not until she sees justice done.

I have not read the first book in the series, but I wasn't floundering through this one. Shiloh is an engaging character, and other characters were portrayed well, including various animals. The plot didn't exactly grip me, which meant it took forever for me to finish the book. Also, my logical brain kicked into gear...( Here be Bitching and Spoilers )

Another thing I didn't care for was just how big a bitch a particular character was to Shiloh. Her son, Quinn, seems like a potential romantic interest for Shi, and Quinn's daughter (Doreen's granddaughter) adores Shiloh. Doreen, however, is an absolute c*nt. Blah. Also, Shiloh's father is a cranky recluse, yet for no discernible reason he allowed two other characters (at separate times) into his house and yukked it up with them. It was jarringly out of character for him.

Favorite lines:
* There was something about evenings in October that felt different from an evening during any other month of the year. It was the mixture of magic and spook settling in with the evening fog and mist.
* It seemed that every bit of news in Cherry Glen went through Jessa's Place first, to the point that sometimes the people it was happening to found out about it at the diner.
* "Minnie wasn't my friend," I said. "She hated me." // "Did she ever rage-plant ivy in your yard?" // I shook my head. "No." // "Then she didn't hate you enough."

And, for good measure, here's the 'I had no idea I was holding my breath' line:
* All of the air whooshed out of my body. I didn't know I had been holding my breath."

I'm rather meh about this book. I liked the main character and many secondary ones. I enjoyed the farm setting (although the author needs to brush up on farm terminology), but the narrative was slow, clunky, and sometimes confusing. Not sure I'd read another in this series. Three stars.

Since this is the first I've read in this series, it gets put to my ( Trope Test )