Book Review: Pushing Up Daisies by Rosemary Harris (Dirty Business Mysteries #1)

Stars: 2 out of 5
Pros: Interesting premise, second half

Cons: Mostly flat characters, poor plotting

The Bottom Line:

Hopes for new series

Met with poor execution

Should have stayed buried

Wilted Daisies

Sometimes, a book gets great advanced praise. It sounds interesting. I get it, can't wait to read it, and wind up highly disappointed. Such is the case with Pushing Up Daisies, the first Dirty Business Mystery by Rosemary Harris.

Paula Holliday has left behind the rat race of television programming for the quiet life of small town Connecticut. And she's indulging her love of gardening by opening a struggling gardening business. It's hard (and dirty) work, but she enjoys it.

When the mansion and gardens of Halcyon, a local landmark, are left to the historic society, Paula gets the job of restoring the grounds to their former glory. It's a mammoth project, but Paula is excited about the prospect. That is, until she starts digging the first day and finds the remains of a baby. Suddenly, old mysteries are rising to the surface. Who were the parents? Was it one of the spinster sisters who lived at Halcyon? Will digging up old rumors cause fresh pain?

After reading the first chapter, I thought I was in for a great read. It was a little exposition heavy, but many first chapters are as they give us character back stories. It's not my favorite, but I can live with it. By the end, we'd met two interesting characters and Paula had found the body.

Unfortunately, it went downhill from there.

There are about half a dozen interesting characters in the story. Based on their place in the story, I'm sure they are intended to be the recurring cast who help Paula deal with the mysteries in future books. These characters had personality and the potential to grow into friends as the series progresses. The rest of the characters, however, were bland, one note creations. I struggled to keep them straight as they wandered through the story.

Despite the strong start, the story progresses very slowly during the first half of the book. More time was spent talking about Paula's efforts to restore Halcyon than on advancing the story. Things do get better in the second half.

But that brings up the other problem with the plot. Several times, the plot advances because Paula blurts out an accusation or statement and the person she is talking to admits Paula is right. These statements come out of no where and left me scratching my head trying to figure out how she ever reached that deduction. I'm willing to forgive a little of that in third person novels, but this is a first person book, which makes things even worse.

Despite these flaws, the writing was technically fine. It flowed with no major errors to slow me down. Of course, I caught a major error of fact in the epilogue, which made me wonder what else might have been wrong over the course of the book.

Pushing Up Daisies had an interesting premise. But it needed more time to put down roots. Instead of being in full bloom, this book was published as soon as it sprouted.