Jeanne Reviews: Live and Let Chai by Bree Baker

Swan women don’t leave home.  Swan women are unlucky in love.  Being a Swan woman in her hometown of Charm, North Carolina wasn’t easy so Everly left, following her heart. When that ended up badly broken, she returned to Swan.  This time the dream she was following was her own:  opening up a tea shop.  It was a bit of a battle, due in part to the aptly named Mr. Paine, an influential citizen who took a dim view of—well, lots of things.  On the day in question, he was demanding a list of ingredients from Everly, who wasn’t about to part with family recipes.  Their disagreement takes on more importance when Mr. Paine turns up dead—possibly poisoned by Everly’s tea.

This is a first in series, so time is spent in set-up. We meet Everly’s bee-loving aunts, her best friend, and (of course) the gruff yet alluring detective assigned to the case. Charm itself is almost a character, a beach town struggling with wanting tourists and with the need to keep its own small town identity in the face of tourism and commercialism.

There’s a whiff of the paranormal, but not much more than that.  The Swan family is as close to royalty as Charm gets, buoyed by the legends that swirl around them, legends which seem to be true. The mystery is serviceable.

Everly was a bit immature for my taste, but to each her own.  Most of the cozy tropes were on full display, from emotionally wounded hero to headstrong pouting heroine to town gossip (the latter in the form of an anonymous blogger, shades of Lady Whistledown!) I consider it to be a solid middle of the road cozy.  It appears that the series will come to an end with book seven, Pleading the Fish, due out in March, 2022.  

The books in order are:

Live and Let Chai

No Good Tea Goes Unpunished

Tide and Punishment

A Call for Kelp

Closely Harbored Secrets

Partners in Lime

Pleading the Fish

Bree Baker is a pseudonym for Julie Anne Lindsey, who writes several series under various names including the Cider Shop Mysteries and Kitty Couture Mysteries (the latter under the name Julie Chase).