Rach's Reading Club

"Empty Nest" Aloha Chicken mystery #8 by Josie Avari


This book qualifies for March because it featured an artist who makes life like birds out of silk feathers he crafts himself. I wanted to see and touch one of the birds but while that wasn't possible, Josie did a great job of describing them.

This one was another departure from the norm. I guess she feels she should mix it up more now that she's getting deeper into the series?

Saffron's niceness and compassion for others have been clear throughout the series. It's part of what makes me love her (plus she's smart, has that special color vision, works super hard, and takes action to help people). This book though... after she has a terrible accident and broke 3 different bones, she ends up babysitting 5 kids (only able to use one arm!) right after being released from the hospital. I love helping people but I would have needed some time to recover. The babysitting is kind of longer-term as one of the other kids in the family is in the hospital for something serious and both parents have to be there. This is a big family. There's actually a seventh child! But it's a baby and someone else agreed to watch the baby. So Saffron "only" had five kids to watch, instead of six.

While recovering and babysitting, Saffron manages to solve multiple intertwined mysteries. Amazing. There was one part I solved right away, but another that I didn't figure out until near the end, so even though it was a little more predictable than some of the others (there was one that was more predictable, but most were less so), it did still keep me guessing some, right up until near the end.

Keahi returns and does something amazing (don't want to spoil it). I loved that he did it.

Nik... well I am not sure why this romance is continuing? I get that there's a big physical / location distance between Saffron and Keahi but her heart is clearly with him and Nik is just someone fun to spend time with. Too fun, imo, but again, I don't want to spoil it in case someone sees this and reads it.

The kids were a nice, albeit kind of weird (in that... really? Who would volunteer to watch five kids indefinitely while they're still in the hospital themselves???) addition, and "Dangerous" the lion was a key part of the story. It wasn't the best in the series, to me, but it was interesting and I definitely want to keep on reading this series.