Title: Death Bee Comes Her
Author: Nancy Coco
Series: An Oregon Honeycomb Mystery #1
Publisher: Kensington
Release Date: December 31, 2019
Pages: 352
Book Source: Paperback
“First in a New Cozy Series!
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_With her Let It Bee honey boutique buzzing along nicely, life is as sweet as nectar for Wren Johnson—until she takes a morning walk along the Pacific beach with her Havana Brown cat, Everett, and stumbles upon the body of Agnes Snow, the cranky queen of the local craft fairs, stiff as driftwood. _
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More unfortunate? Clutched in the victim’s fist is a label from Wren’s homemade beeswax-and-honey lip balm. Which makes Officer Jim Hampton focus his dreamy-blue Paul Newman eyes on Wren as suspect number one.
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With fabulous feline support from Everett, Wren must comb the town for clues and clear her name before someone else gets stung.” – Goodreads
Kim’s Review
I love finding new cozy mystery series. Each month when the list of new books comes out, the first thing I do is look for new series and then I go back and look at the rest of the new books. I was super excited when I came across Death Bee Comes Her by Nancy Coco, the first book in An Oregon Honeycomb Mystery series.
Most cozies come with recipes or craft patterns, so the first thing I did when I picked up this book was jump to the end to read the recipes, something I always do. I didn’t see any so I thought since this was an ARC they just weren’t in there yet, but would be in the final print. I was pleasantly surprised to see most chapters either started with information about bees, honey, or Havana Browns, which is the type of cat Everett is, or there was a recipe for food or beauty products at the end of the chapter. I don’t recall any other cozies that I’ve read doing it this way.
I was really drawn to Wren’s store because I’m studying to become an herbalist and work with honey for various remedies and recipes. I found some new things to make and I always enjoy when people are exposed to more information on natural products. I would continue reading this series just because of that, but Coco wrote a great mystery besides!
Coco’s character development was very good for the first book in a series. The perfect amount of people to have lots of suspects, but not so many that you start to get confused. And the town sounds lovely, plus the story took place over Halloween, which is my favorite holiday. I hadn’t realized that by looking at the cover or reading the synopsis, so if you too enjoy Halloween, that’s just one more reason you should read Death Bee Comes Her.
I thought I had the mystery figured out but was mostly wrong, and I did not see the motive coming at all, so that was wonderful. It was a bit of a different reason as to why people had to be killed, which is always enjoyable to me when I read something a bit different.
There was one mystery involving Everett that was not for sure solved and Wren’s arch nemesis comes to town which you know will make for lots of drama in future books. I’m excited for the next book in An Oregon Honeycomb Mystery and to see where Coco takes the story.
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