Simply Angela : All-Butter Short Dead by H.Y. Hanna

Gemma ditches her high-flying job and returns to Oxford to follow her dream: opening a traditional English tearoom serving warm buttery scones with jam and clotted cream, and fragrant tea in pretty bone china… Only problem is–murder is the first thing on the menu and Gemma is the key suspect! And the only people Gemma can turn to for help are four nosy old ladies from her local Cotswolds village – not to mention a cheeky little tabby cat named Muesli.

Who is the mysterious woman Gemma met on the flight back from Australia and why was she murdered? Now Gemma must find the killer, solve the mystery and clear her name if she’s to have her cake–and serve it too.
Series: Oxford Tearoom Mysteries #0.5 | Publisher: Wisheart Press | Genre: Contemporary Cozy Mystery | Source: Amazon Freebie (at the time of purchased in 2016) | Rating: 4 Cups

Challenges Read For: -Cruisin' Thru The Cozies - Book of My Choice

I’ve been enjoying this series—I’m seven books in—and thought I’d finally go back read the prequel. I’m glad that I did. It was a nice change to see the beginning of Gemma’s amateur sleuthing and the start of her teashop.

Here’s what’s going on. Gemma’s finally returning home from Australia to start a new chapter in her life, which includes starting her own teashop. Although her intentions are put on hold when she becomes the prime suspect in a murder investigation. To make matters worse, she barely knows the woman who sat next to her on the flight let alone who would want to murder her. As the police set their eyes on Gemma, Gemma’s dream of owning a little teashop slips further from her grasp. Working alongside a group of four elderly women known as the ‘old biddies’, Gemma must catch the murderer before she’s charged with a crime she didn’t commit.

For me, these books have been a bit up and down. Some work, some I struggle with although this one was a good one. It was a nice little introduction to Gemma, her circle of friends, and the setting.

The mystery in this one was easy to figure out although I found it had an interesting approach and required a bit more digging around as the victim had memory issues and Gemma was going on very little information from the start and unreliable information at that.

Overall, while it was a fun and quick little read, it doesn’t actually add a lot to the story that’s not already known once you’ve read a few of them. I picked this up in 2016 (according to Amazon) when it was a freebie, so I didn’t really mind that it didn’t add a lot to the series. I’m not sure, given that this one is a short story, that I would pay the $3.99 for it. If you’ve read a few in the series, I would say wait until this one either goes on sale or is free.