The New York Times bestselling author of Spellcasting in Silk continues as witch and vintage boutique owner Lily Ivory cracks open a Pandora’s box when she investigates some alarming apparel...
Even the most skilled sorceress can’t ward off a lawsuit, and Lily is not at her enchanting best with her hands full as the temporary leader of San Francisco's magical community. So after her potbellied pig Oscar head-butts rival clothier Autumn Jennings, Lily tries to make peace without a costly personal injury case.
But any hope of a quiet resolution is shattered when Autumn turns up dead. As one of the prime suspects, Lily searches for a way to clear her name and discovers a cursed trousseau among Autumn’s recently acquired inventory. Lily must deal with a mysterious dogwalker and spend the night in a haunted house as she delves into the trunk’s treacherous past. She’s got to figure out who wanted to harm Autumn fast, before the curse claims another victim…
A Toxic Trousseau is the eighth installment in Juliet
Blackwell’s Witchcraft Mystery series and is definitely a surprising one in
more ways than one! I love that this series doesn’t necessarily require you to
know all the details of the previous novel, because I am starting to have a
short-term memory problem apparently! Lol. But each mystery stands on its own
and only a few details about Lily’s life carry over from book to book and the
surprises in this one are bound to come back around in the next two
installments.
Lily is having quite the morning when she comes to open her
beloved vintage clothing shop only to be served with papers for a lawsuit. It
seems Oscar caused “severe and traumatic” injury to a customer. When Lily tries
to go talk to this woman, another vintage clothing dealer by the name of
Autumn, she finds her falling to the floor completely sick, except, as it turns
out, she was poisoned.
And as the story description will tell you, Autumn doesn’t
make it and dies. Now Lily is a suspect in what might be a murder case and if
she doesn’t find out who the true culprit is, she might be in deeper waters
than she anticipated.
Aidan also reins Lily in to filling in his position while he
goes out of town for some mysterious reason. She will now be the go to witch
for witchy and warlocky related disputes. There’s something about Aidan’s
satchel that he leaves behind with her that has everyone seriously freaked out
when Lily even dares to mention it. While that part of the story doesn’t get a
lot of attention, it does have me curious for what will come next.
I got to hand it to Juliet, she really knows how to write an
entertaining and insightful book! I have no doubts about the research she put
in to revealing information about how women’s ballgowns and what not were made
wayyy back in the day. As it turns out, some of those dresses were laced with
poison! It had something to do with the dye, despite having no knowledge about
fashion from the past, I have no doubts that Juliet studied up on the subject
for this book. And let’s also add in the fact that a very famous mansion from
California made it into this book…under another name of course. I wasn’t quite
sure why there was a name change, I assumed copyright laws, but within minutes
I put it together about what house was being discussed and I couldn’t help but
smile. I hope to visit that house someday!
The mystery itself was another one that had me guessing
until the very end! I have to say that I came nowhere close to guessing the
whodunit. But that just goes to show how poorly of a detective I would make,
despite knowing who the bad guy was in every Scooby Doo episode I ever watched!
Lol. Though I will say, the mystery was definitely more complex in terms of
whodunit. There was a lot more to it then the simplicity of who wanted to
murder Autumn for what reason. I will be interested to see how that will turn
out in future books.
There’s more mentioning of this big event that has yet to
come to San Francisco that Aidan has SEEN. He knows it coming and it seems like
that day is getting closer and closer. Though something else happens that might
throw a wrench into his plans for Lily that I am excited to see happen! Lol.
All in all, A Toxic
Trousseau was yet another delightful mystical and magical mystery! I have
so enjoyed getting caught back up in this series and alas, I find it’s time I
get back to some of my review books that have piled up, but hopefully it won’t
be too long before I can pick up the next installment, though it will likely be
after the newest one comes out next month, more binge reading ahead for me!
Overall Rating 5/5 stars
How have I not heard of this series before?? It sounds so good!!
ReplyDelete