Book 28 Buzz Off

Buzz Off by Hannah Reed fulfills the category “Book with an Onomatopoeia in the Title” for the PopSugar 2022 Reading Challenge. Here’s how this novel ended up on the blog. I started with a few choices. (Check out my List Challenge for this year’s reading blog.) I love Terry Pratchett and am trying to read his Discworld series in order of publication. Reading fourteen to get to Thud! this year seemed impossible.

I grabbed Buzz Off from Audible, as I have a ton of credits. We all know how I love a cozy mystery. I worried my fifteen-year-old would not let me listen, as they have a terrible aversion to bees. Then Libby, my favorite app, delivered a book I ordered months ago, A Rip Through Time by Kelley Armstrong.

Crud, I double dipped again.

Buzz Off is a cozy mystery starring Missy “Story” Fischer, an amateur beekeeper and recent divorcee. When Story discovers her mentor in the bee business is dead, she wonders if it’s murder. The sheriff is a terrible pain in the tush, as is her ex-husband. When another woman, her ex’s fiancé, ends up dead too, all fingers point at our heroine.

I enjoyed the book, though the start had quite an info dump to catch the reader up on all of Story’s background. As the first book in a series, I could forgive it. But if Book Two does the same, I probably won’t finish the Queen Bee series. The author took the time to give Story a few unique characteristics. Many cozy heroines are cut from the same cardboard cutout. In Story’s case, she actually doing well with her business and loves to point out facts with bullet points.

Buzz Off was a fun, cozy mystery with a great set of characters.

Since I ended up reading A Rip Through Time before I posted the onomatopoeia post, I’m including it this week. The novel is very different from Buzz Off. This book is more police procedural/Sherlock Holmes-esk with the added element of time travel. Yep, time travel. A detective from 2019 gets caught somehow in a time vortex and ends up in the body of a nineteen-year-old housemaid in 1869.

Mallory, or Catriona as she’s called in Victorian England, must solve her own murder. Apparently, she fell through time because she was attacked in the same place as Catriona, just 150 years later. The culprit is still killing people. Luckily, Mallory ended up in the house of an undertaker who helps the police with crimes. Mallory must hide her intelligence, training, and knowledge of the future while trying to redeem Catriona, who was a naughty girl.

The book had many twists and turns. Mallory trying to be Victorian and still be herself is interesting. The woman never questioned how she got there. In fact, she opts not to tell Dr. Duncan Gray, her boss, as he is distracted by scientific anomalies. She regrets her station, and the personality of the girl who she’s inhabiting. With her new employer and his widowed sister, Mallory is on the case.

The tag line for the novel is “Outlander meets The Alienist.” It’s not quite that. If you enjoyed either of those two novels, you would like A Rip Through Time.

I give Buzz Off by Hanna Reed Four Shiny Yellow Beehives.

I give A Rip Through Time by Kelley Armstrong Five Pen Knives for Self-Defense.