Book Title: Dead Cereus by Kira Kanani Seamon

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Category: Adult Fiction (18+), 276 pages

Genre: New Adult Cozy Mystery

Publisher: Kira Kanani Seamon

Release date: January 2021

Synopsis

Holy holly berries! “Hurricane Holly” creates shenanigans on the Olympic level. This mischievous charmer has found herself in many strange messes, but this one takes the carrot cake!

With her college scholarship already on frost alert, when Holly accidentally douses the college’s most distinguished donors, she sees her degree and her relationship with the hot Master Gardener quickly wilting.

Her only chance of remaining in Shellesby is to win a vaunted internship with a famous chocolatier. The only problem? The other candidate is Holly’s biggest rival, a stuck-up queen bee-and she just might have her sights set on Holly’s swoon-worthy boyfriend as well!

With a chance to win over the prestigious chocolatier when the rare night-blooming cereus plant is scheduled to open its petals at the Night Lights Gala, Holly is there-and so is a killer. Events unfold that not only place her scholarship on the line, but also her life…and that of her rival.

Holly finds herself racing the clock to save her arch-nemesis, secure her scholarship, and catch a murderer if she can!

Enjoy this lighthearted romp with its plethora of plants and wonderful characters by picking up a copy of Dead Cereus today! Can Holly stand the heat in the hothouse or is she headed for a spectacular meltdown?

This is an epic romance and a fantastic, unique mystery rolled into one hilarious story. With all the feels, this novel can’t help but implant itself in your heart and grow into one of your favorite reads. Put your petal to the metal and see what all the buzz is about. Dead Cereus is to die for!

Come for the mystery, stay for the food. Chocolate plays a big role in this book; you will ‘chocolate’ as you’ve never ‘chocolated’ before! Hot new debut author Kira Seamon makes botany cool again, one plant at a time.

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Praise

Seamon is a master at creating atmospheric settings, and cozy mystery lovers will find it easy to fall under her spell. An appealing, witty heroine, a gem of a leading man, and well-constructed setting and plot make this one a must-read for both mystery lovers and fans of chick-lit literature. Readers will look forward to more of Holly and William’s adventures.

Review

This was quite an interesting book and different from most cozies that I read, but it has all of the characteristics of a cozy such as an amateur sleuth, a mystery to solve, and a small town setting.

Holly is on thin ice with the president of the college and has a tumultuous relationship with his daughter, Ivy. They compete with each other for everything and it doesn’t look like a truce is in sight. Not until she shares a special tea with Ivy that changes everything.

At first, I didn’t think that this was a cozy because while there is a murder we know who the killer is right off the bat. However, when something happens to Ivy, Holly rushes off to help her and seems to throw caution to the wind and not involve anyone else in her plans. Or she keeps them in the dark, like her boyfriend William. William is on her side but they have an odd relationship. While he will do anything for her and to protect her, sometimes he treats her like a child. Granted, Holly acts like a child a lot of the time and one of my favorite lines is when Williams tells her she is acting like an eight-year-old having a tantrum. This statement is very true and creates an unlikeable character in Holly, but she does have a big heart and wants to help those around her. Despite that, he does love her and they do seem to have a fairytale romance.

The setting is amazing and while I do not have a green thumb, I admire those that do. The descriptions of the plants, the greenhouse, the butterfly garden, and the herb garden were detailed and I enjoyed the fun facts about the various plants and flowers.

We enjoyed this story and the recipes at the end (don’t miss those!) and give it 4 paws up.

About the Author

Kira Kanani Seamon was born and raised in Hawaii. She attended the prestigious Punahou School as an award-winning honor student.

A polymath, Kira is a gold medal/state winner in piano performance and a national and two-time regional dance champion. In ten years of competing in dance competitions, she won 18 awards, including special awards from the judges and platinum awards. Additionally, she’s an award-winning photographer and has had her art accepted and sold in national and regional juried shows. She’s had over fifty newspaper cover stories about her art and is a fourteen-time grant recipient from cultural councils. She celebrated her first solo museum exhibit of her work in 2020.

Now living in Massachusetts, she was recently the inaugural artist-in-residence in Natick, Massachusetts. She received a personal letter from the Massachusetts Senate President and a Certificate of Recognition from the Massachusetts State Legislation in recognition of her grant from Framingham, Massachusetts. All of this culminated in her receiving the prestigious Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award, for which she appeared in the Wall Street Journal in 2020.

She took a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Machu Picchu, Peru with the Punahou Alumni Association, and her travel tale about that expedition is published in the 2021 September/October edition of the Writers and Readers Magazine. Additionally, her Peru photography is the editorial feature in the 2021 fall edition of DRIFT Travel magazine.

DRIFT Travel is an upscale travel and lifestyle magazine with each issue being emailed to 4+ million digital magazine readers worldwide. Additionally, DRIFT is also part of the PressReader magazine/newspaper digital platform that puts DRIFT in thousands of hotels, cruise ships, resorts, and airlines around the world, opening the door to an additional 300 million users annually.

Kira has never met a story from Greek mythology that she didn’t love and has kept a daily journal since her teens. Dead Cereus is her first novel.

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