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PLANTATION SHUDDERS is the first in a new series set in Louisiana's Cajun country an area of the United States that is ripe for mysterious happenings. The Cajun and Creole cultures intersect here with many families claiming both heritages while being far enough from the bigger cities to let the superstitions and legends to flourish. The title of the book alludes to both the past grandeur of the large plantations and the cold that creeps over a person with a sense of doom known in the area as "the shudders."
Magnolia Crozat left Louisiana for a new life in New York City, but when her boyfriend decides that he is ready to settle down, only not with her, she returns home to Pelican, Louisiana. Faced with the mounting costs of maintaining a plantation, her parents and grandmother have turned their family home into a bed and breakfast. Maggie's arrives home just in time to help with the full house of visitors in the area for the local food festival. However, things go seriously off track when two of their guests die within a very short time - and one of the deaths was murder.
There are many things in this book that are "typical" cozy features The protagonist has returned home after a failed romance, there is a spunky grandmother in the family, there is a lot of food as well as some regional recipes in the back and there is a long-time feud between the sheriff and the protagonist's family. But PLANTATION SHUDDERS goes well beyond the typical cozy by really placing the reader in the bayou and gives readers just a hint of the paranormal with the characters' shudders. Will there be more of those feelings in future books?
With everything there is to like with this book, I have but one small issue. The book could have used a slightly better job of copy editing as there were a few spots where it appeared revisions had been made but not proofed and a couple of places where it appeared autocorrect had taken over, leaving the reader to figure out what was meant.But this is a new publisher and these were VERY minor in the big picture, and should be easily remedied with future books. In the meantime, I am looking forward to the second book in the series.
§ Caryn St.Clair resides in University City, Missouri and is a former elementary school media specialist, President of the Parks Commission and a docent at the St.Louis Zoo.
Reviewed by Caryn St Clair, August 2015
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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