Full Bodied Murder (Rose Avenue Wine Club Mystery, #1) by Christine E. Blum

Full Bodied Murder by Christine E. Blum
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

After her marriage failed Annie “Halsey” Hall decided to get as far from New York as she could by heading out to sunny California. Halsey found herself a lovely new home on Rose Avenue with a swimming pool in back to keep her young lab occupied while she worked. Moving into her new home she wonders about the neighbors seeing her first impression is of the lady next door keeping an eye out on her.

Before long Halsey finds herself making new friends in her new town when she meets a group of ladies that invite her to come to their wine club meeting. As Halsey heads over to the home for the meeting she arrives to find an open door with no one around. Thinking the club may be out back Halsey heads in only to find a dead body. As police arrive Halsey realizes she mistakenly went to the wrong home and now finds herself a suspect in murder. Halsey then enlists the help of the ladies in the wine club to clear her name and solve the crime.

Full Bodied Murder by Christine E. Blum is the first book in the cozy Rose Avenue Wine Club Mystery series. As with most cozy mysteries this series comes with it’s own unique hook to center the story around and that is the group’s love of wine and there are plenty of mentions throughout the book of different varieties. The main character is a new comer to the neighborhood and finding her way into the group and out of a murder charge with the local police.

While in the end I did enjoy this for the most part I also think it did have a few flaws. One that I noticed was there could have been a lot more depth given to the supporting characters to make them stand out a bit more, I would often forget who was who. It seemed the main character’s dog, Bardot,was featured more than anyone else but who doesn’t love a great animal?? The neighborhood also had a lot of shady dealings for being supposedly a great place to live and the budding relationship had a rough start I didn’t quite enjoy. Overall though the story was an OK one that I would probably test out the second book of the series, would hate to miss out on Bardot’s latest antics as he stole the show with this one.

I received an advance copy from the publisher via NetGalley.