ARC review: The Biscuit Witch by Deborah Smith

 

Many thanks to Net Galley and Bell Bridge books for the advanced reader's copy of this novel.

 

Synopsis(via Goodreads):

 



 This time, the MacBrides are home to stay.
The Biscuit WitchA Crossroads Café NovellaBook One of The MacBrides
Dear Dr. Firth:I know you are in your cups at this time, drinking, taking pills, and sleeping under trees, but I have some experience rehabilitating lost souls in that regard, and so I am enclosing a box of my biscuits and a cold-wrapped container of cream gravy for dessert. Please eat and write back. We need a veterinarian of your gumption here in the Crossroads Cove of Jefferson County. --Delta Whittlespoon, proprietress of The Crossroads Café
Biscuit witches, Mama called them. She’d heard the term as a girl. She’d inherited that talent. My mother could cast spells on total strangers simply by setting a plate of her biscuits in front of them. –Tal MacBride
Welcome back to the Crossroads Cove where new loves, old feuds, and poignant mysteries will challenge siblings Tal, Gabby, and Gus MacBride to fight for the home they lost and to discover just how important their family once was, and still is, to the proud people of the Appalachian highlands. Tallulah MacBride hasn’t been back to North Carolina since their parents’ tragic deaths, twenty years ago. But now, Tal heads to cousin Delta Whittlespoon’s famous Crossroads Café in the mountains above Asheville, hoping to find a safe hiding place for her young daughter, Eve. What she finds is Cousin Delta gone, the café in a biscuit crisis, and a Scotsman, who refuses to believe she’s passing through instead of “running from.” He believes she needs a knight in shining flannel.When a pair of sinister private eyes show up, Tal’s troubles are just beginning. For Tal’s brother and sister—Gabby, the Pickle Queen, and Gus, the Kitchen Charmer—the next part of the journey will lead down forgotten roads and into beautiful but haunted legacies.

This insomniac's opinion:

I very, very much wanted to like this novel. The synopsis sounds delightfully magical, doesn't it? *insert sad sigh here* It, unfortunately, was not my cup of tea. In fact, reading the last half felt like work. *another sigh for good measure* It truly felt more like a Harlequin novel that a delightfully magical novel. Now, I am by no means saying that others may not enjoy this book, it is just not my cup of tea.

Worth staying up all night to read?

Not for me.

Rating: 3 stars(I wavered between 2 and 3 stars, but I feel that it is more that the author's style doesn't jive with my reading style as opposed to a truly lousy book)