Rach's Reading Club

"Bad Egg" Aloha Chicken Mystery #9 by Josie Avari

This book finds Saffron trapped in a mansion with a killer who managed to commit their crime in an impossible seeming situation - the body is found alone inside a room with only one entrance and the door was locked from the inside. The people who cared about the victim had to use an axe to get into the room, because there was no other perceivable way. It was an interesting mystery to solve.

There was the band, the host, his son, the staff, and a surprise appearance from the son's estranged mother (surprising because all the roads were blocked and there was so much smoke it was dangerous to be outside).

Saffron, as usual, was the brains behind figuring out the mystery. She had more pressure than usual to solve it on her own because there weren’t any law enforcement people available and other than the gardener she befriended, anyone else present, at least at first, she felt could be the murderer.

I liked that a new (not only to the series but to me) chicken type was introduced and that the gardener had taught them to express themselves on the xylophone. The chickens even became part of Saffron's camouflage, which I liked.

The romance in this book was weird. Nik wasn’t in any scenes, just talked about. Like how he could be relied upon (along with Saffron’s dad and Mano, her adopted Grandfather), and he was used as an excuse to not date the rich host. It certainly didn’t feel romantic at all, at least between Saffron and Nik, because they had no interactions. At least that I remember. I have a concussion so my brain isn’t working quite as usual.

The band was interesting, the family dynamics odd, the fact that a housekeeper was so blatantly stealing and no one turned her in was bizarre to me.

I loved the mom and the ending for her and her son. And Cupcake (the chicken star of the last two books) finally got some chicks she could raise fully, which made me happy. So it was a nice finale to my day (I finished the book and went right to bed).