Shift in Tone and Pace but Still Solidly Wisteria

This book was given to me for free at my request and I provided this voluntary review. This is the 6th book in the Wisteria Witch Mysteries by Angela Pepper and the first book about Zara’s aunt Zinnia. The story takes place almost entirely before Zara and Zoey arrive in Wisteria. As such it has a different tone and cast than the first 5 books. Zinnia is more responsible and less zany than Zara. She is more experienced with witchcraft so there is less joy of discovery and exploration of the world and wonders of this quirky, charming suburbia. The format of the story is more about office life and the ole of your coworkers as a pseudo family as they discover that one of their co-workers was murdered. This down put a bit of a downer on the book. Although Zara deals with ghosts, more are completely unknown to her to here we have people grieving and dealing with how you carry on after losing an acquaintance. In a meta twist, the co-worker in question was a writer in her spare time and fashioned a fantastic fan fic where each of her co-workers possessed magical powers or properties. How much did she know and how much was a fun story? There are also plenty of jokes about writing including how some series decide to split off with a side character. Angela Pepper gets to flex some different muscles with this series but there are plenty of connections and call forwards to the main series – including relatives of and cameos from town residents we know and love. This story had a few scenes that were more intense than I’ve come to expect from the author and frequent flashbacks made the real slightly more challenging than previous installments. By the time you get to the end everything falls into place. I’m glad the next volume is already available and ready to launch into. Rosemary Benson has the unenviable task of being the second narrator of the series after Tiffany Williams has narrated the first five. It makes sense that Zara and Zinnia have different voices and so while I did need to adjust my expectations, she did an excellent job managing the voices of the new cast of characters and making known characters recognizable while still giving her own performance rather than try to mimic Williams. She is a wonderful narrator in her own right.

2 people found this helpful

Loved it!

After listening to Wisteria Witches I had to pick this one up. I love thats it is a backstory on Zinnia, which takes place before Zara arrives in town and finishes up in the same timeframe. It certainly helped me understand Zinnias thoughts and actions throughout the other book. This is an excellent companion with its own magical murder mystery! I cant wait to grab more in the series! Great cozy with great narration! I received a free review copy of this book at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

2 people found this helpful

Slow beginning/better ending

I had to force myself to continue to read in the beginning. It was very slow moving and not really interesting. Maybe 2/4 of the way through it started to get good but not the greatest. The ending was way better and kind of put the rest of the books together. I will continue to read the series hopefully the next one will be better.

1 person found this helpful

Wolves of Wisteria

Getting to step back and get Zinnia's story was such a delight. I really enjoyed her quirky character in book 1 and this book gives so much insight into her and how she became how she is. It was also so eye opening to the wonderful little town. My heart really went out to her as the story unfolded and the ending kinda broke my heart for her. Zinnia still has may mysteries to share that I hope will come out in future books and I so look forward to those. This series is turning out to be a blast! The narration was very nice as well.

1 person found this helpful

Love it!

I'm a big fan of both series and happy to have the audio books! Looking forward to more! Thanks Ms. Pepper!

1 person found this helpful

This book is not good at all

It’s all focused on aunt zinnia and it is slow and boring and the characters have no depth. I would just skip over books 6 and seven and go straight to eight. This book is not worth the credit. I wish I could return it and get my credit back. I couldn’t tell if the narrator was any good because the story was just so drawn out and boring

Prefer Zara as a main character, but very good.

I enjoyed the first several books in the series very much. This doesn’t quite measure up, but is still very good if you enjoy Wisteria. The narrator did very well. The only thing that bothered me is she didn’t pronounce “Zara” the same way as the original narrator. I anticipated some characters would sound different, but the pronunciation of the name for one of the main character’s in the series seems pretty important to keep consistent.

Hate the narrator

The narrator makes u sleep not enthusiastic, loved the narrator in the earlier books much much much better

this one is slow and not funny like the first 5 😥

i really enjoyed the first five but this one not so much.. good for sleeping

Love these books!

I love this author, and I love these books, but this narrator was not quite right. She talked too slow, too low. I had to up the speed to 1.15 for her to sound normal. I miss the previous narrator. But she did a good job with the voices overall. And I still love these books!