A SPRINKLING OF MURDER by Daryl Wood Gerber

"Fairies, murder, and intrigue"

A Sprinkling of Murder

Posted: July 7, 2020

Courtney Kelly loves sharing her belief in the world of fairies with others through her store, Open Your Imagination, where she teaches and sells various items to help with landscaping, to include designing fairy gardens. Her own personal fairy, Fiona, is visible to those who are willing to believe. Unfortunately, not everyone is wild over a shop catering to the imagination and so when another tenant of the Cypress and Ivy Courtyard is found dead in Courtney’s shop, Courtney is immediately a suspect. Can Courtney and Fiona uncover the real killer?

Fairies and cozy mysteries- what a delightful combination! Daryl Wood Gerber tantalizes the imagination as we enter into a world where fairies exist and have goals they have to work on in order to earn their wings. We are given some information on Fiona, but there is still so much more I want to know and can’t wait to learn in future books.

Daryl Wood Gerber is a genius at worldbuilding, crafting towns and stores we want to spend time just perusing the shelves and walking down the streets. The Cypress and Ivy Courtyard and Open Your Imagination are exactly those kind of places. The atmosphere is perfect to believe in fairies and I could practically hear the tinkling of chimes as I turned the pages.

A SPRINKLING OF MURDER is the first book in the Fairy Garden series and what an enchanting start! Daryl Wood Gerber is a long time favorite of mine for cozy mysteries, but A SPRINKLING OF MURDER ups the ante a bit with the magical element of fairies. Readers will delight in the whimsical fairy gardens and peaceful setting of Open Your Imagination, wanting to visit again and again. I can’t wait till the next installment to see what else Daryl Wood Gerber has in store for us!

Book Summary

Fairy garden store owner Courtney Kelly believes in inviting magic into your life. But when uninvited trouble enters her shop, she’ll need more than a sprinkling of her imagination to solve a murder . . .

Since childhood, Courtney has loved fairies. After her mother died when Courtney was ten, she lost touch with that feeling of magic. A year ago, at age twenty-nine, she rediscovered it when she left her father's landscaping business to spread her wings and start a fairy garden business and teashop in beautiful Carmel, California. At Open Your Imagination, she teaches garden design and sells everything from fairy figurines to tinkling wind chimes. Now she's starting a book club tea.

But the light of the magical world she's created inside her shop is darkened one night when she discovers neighboring dog-grooming business owner Mick Watkins dead beside her patio fountain. To make matters worse, the police suspect Courtney of the crime. To clear her name and find the real killer, Courtney will have to wing it. But she’s about to get a little help from an unexpected source . . .