Poppy Done to Death (Aurora Teagarden #8)<\/b>
\nThere’s not really any way I can properly comment upon this (final?) entry in the Aurora Teagarden series without getting into extensive spoiler territory. So for anyone who thinks they might want to read it in the future, please keep reading so I can dissuade you from wasting your time. The eighth installment of Ms. Teagarden’s adventures picks up the story only a few weeks after the events of the previous book, Last Scene Alive. But the excitement of the movie filming is long over, as no one ever really mentions or refers to this recent change of pace. Instead, we are thrown into a meeting of some kind of women’s club\/town sorority called the “Uppity Women”. Roe is a member, but apparently so also is her stepbrother’s wife, who seems to have no qualifications of the sort that Roe lists as required for membership. Her other stepbrother’s wife is about to be inducted into the club, but she does not show up to the ceremony. Because she’s been MURDERED!! Roe and her sister-in-law discover the body at which point the mystery begins. Who killed Poppy? The mystery itself is filled with a bazillion red herrings, which is important, because it’s not really much of a mystery otherwise. Unfortunately, the red herrings are of an increasingly ridiculous and irritating nature. Poppy and her husband John David, it turns out, had an open marriage, and they both had any number of lovers. Why John David chooses to sleep with other women is taken as his nature, but of course we must have an explanation for why Poppy, a WOMAN, would choose such an outrageous lifestyle. Tada, she was molested as a child! Explanation achieved. And of course it’s impossible to have an open marriage and be responsible in any way, so of course Poppy is uncertain as to the paternity of her son. Aurora spends most of the book sputtering and musing on how messed up this all is. I’m sure the reader is supposed to share Roe’s view, but I just ended up wanting to smack her for being such a judgemental bitch.<\/p>\n
And it wouldn’t be an Aurora Teagarden book without millions of things happening to Aurora in her personal life. One must keep in mind that as this book takes place only about six weeks after the previous book (a fact which Harris keeps forgetting, or else in the south the month of October is much longer than it is elsewhere) — she moved to a new house and was in the middle of moving at the end of that book. So she’s only just settled in. She has a new boyfriend, who also just moved to town. Then her teenaged half-brother shows up having run away from home. And apparently her friend Sally (who seemed ok in the last book) now has Alzheimers or something.<\/p>\n
This has the air of a final book, as Harris makes some effort to wrap up storylines and punish the series ‘villains’. Roe’s dad, who cheated on her mom and spent years being a dick to Aurora, is caught cheating on his second wife. She leaves him and as previously mentioned, his son runs away from home. Roe’s ex, Arthur-the-cop, who cheated on her while they were dating, turns out to have been one of Poppy’s boyfriends. He goes completely unbalanced at the end of the book and is assumed to be facing disciplinary action from the police force. Aurora gets a proposal, and, in the most stupid twist of the entire book, her “infertility” which she spent ages whining and moaning about, magically disappears and she is pregnant. And even though she’s just 6w along you know it’s all going to be perfect!<\/p>\n
In short, if you like your mysteries with a heaping side of small-minded judgement and stereotypes, this is the book for you. If not, I’d give the entire series a complete pass and try something less actively moronic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Poppy Done to Death (Aurora Teagarden #8) There’s not really any way I can properly comment upon this (final?) entry in the Aurora Teagarden series without getting into extensive spoiler territory. So for anyone who thinks they might want to read it in the future, please keep reading so I can dissuade you from wasting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2,29],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1082"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1082"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1082\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1083,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1082\/revisions\/1083"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}