Bought the Farm by Peg Cochran

Bought the Farm by Peg Cochran ISBN-13: 9780425282045 Mass Market Paperback: 304 pages Publisher: Berkley Prime Crime Released: June 5, 2018

Source: Review copy from the publisher.

Book Description, Modified from Goodreads:
Wedding preparations are in full swing at Love Blossom Farm as food-and-lifestyle blogger Shelby McDonald transforms the property for her friend Kelly's down-home country-style reception. But when the lead singer of the wedding band turns up dead--drowned in a trough full of rainwater and strung up like a scarecrow--the police round themselves up a barnful of suspects.

It seems that Travis sowed the seeds of discord wherever he went, and when it becomes clear that everyone from the groom to Shelby's own staff has motive, tracking down Travis' killer is going to be more difficult than finding a needle in a haystack.


My Review:
Bought the Farm is a cozy mystery. It's the third book in the series. You can understand this book without reading the previous one, and this novel didn't spoil the mystery in the previous book.

The story was more filler than detection. We're told every single detail about the wedding decor. We're told every single movement that people made, like this was a step-by-step guide. For example, we're told every step Shelby made to hand-wash dishes when the point was that she thought about some things while she washed dishes. This made for very slow pacing.

The heroine asked questions to determine who had a motive but didn't seem to know how to narrow things down once she realized everyone had a motive. She was slow in connecting any clues and wasn't sure what to do once she finally figured out whodunit. Happily, her boyfriend told her to tell the police. Of course, then she spots the murderer and obligingly runs away from whodunit into a secluded spot then falls into a pool to create an exciting ending. Unfortunately, I lost all respect for her instead.

The "Dear Reader" short asides directed at the actual reader broke the flow of the story and pulled me out of any immersion that I had in the story. There were also numerous grammar errors that created sentences that were quite funny as written and required a pause to determine what was really meant. So the mystery wasn't very puzzling and the writing didn't hold my attention. There was no sex. There was no bad language.


If you've read this book, what do you think about it? I'd be honored if you wrote your own opinion of the book in the comments.


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