Monday's Musings - Literary Libations - The Tea Shop Mysteries - Death by Darjeeling

Besides continuing to read with the Victorian Reading Challenge 2020 and the Historical Fiction Challenge 2020, I've been enjoying revisiting a series that I previously hadn't liked. Hey! It is a woman's perogative to change her mind, right?!

One's tastes do change and seasons of life also lend themselves to different styles of reading. Lately, I've been drawn to lighter sort of writing, maybe because the news around the world seems on the heavy side.

So, I'm collecting and reading the Tea Shop Mysteries by Laura Childs. After I'd gotten pretty well into the second book in the series, I decided to buy samples of the various teas that are titles of the books. After looking at the prices and availability of some of them (ie. Dragonwell) I won't be getting all of the teas, but I hope to have a sample of almost all of them as I go along. I also want to try at least one of the recipes in the back of each book. This first book has only one recipe so the choice of which to try was a no-brainer.

Here are my thoughts so far:

The first book is entitled "Death by Darjeeling" and involves the murder of a disreputable land speculator and builder. When a girl who works at the tea shop of Theodosia Browning is accused of the murder, Theo gets involved in solving the mystery of who murdered him and why.

What I liked:

While the characters and dialog are sometimes unrealistic it's all growing on me more. The story itself is pretty good and I'm getting into the decriptions of the historic section of Charleston. The camaraderie between the tea shop people is fun, too. I like what I'm learning about various teas as well as the history of the Charleston area. Laura Childs has a way of keeping the reader in suspense and keeping one guessing as to who the murderer might be all throughout the book.

What I could have lived without:

Again, the pretentious writing and dialog gets annoying as does the author's super frequent use of both the character's first and last names though both names have already been introduced.

The tea:

I had once before tried darjeeling tea and was not impressed, but thanks to these books, I learned that darjeeling must not be oversteeped. So, between that knowledge and Simpson and Vail's quality tea, I enjoyed my sample as did my daughters who kindly joined me in sharing a pot. I discovered that it's good as an iced tea also.

My current favorite tea mug from AFineQuotation on Etsy.

The recipe:

In the back of the book is a recipe for Tea-marbled Eggs that is very simple and tasty. And the eggs turn out looking very cool.

With a few sprinkles of roasted garlic and herbs, they were extra good. I didn't particularly notice that the tea made a big difference in the flavor, but pattern of the marbling was very artsy.

Want to join me? Even if you don't want to buy all the books (but isn't that cover art beautiful and worth having?!) libraries are opening up again for curbside pick-up. I'd love to have you come along.