MURDER IN A TEACUP by Vicki Delany

Lily Roberts is not planning any downtime soon at her Tea by the Sea shop. Her grandmother, Rose, has fully booked her Bed and Breakfast thanks to her longtime friend Sandra and her feisty brood. Sandra, with the financial help of her granddaughter, Heather, have planned a family reunion to try to reconnect after a span of family disagreements and resentments. Along for the reunion are Ed French and his wife, Heather’s in-laws. After the unexpected death of Heather’s husband, things have been a little tense regarding his estate. Sandra and Heather are both hoping this will be a time of healing and moving forward for all of them. Things get off to a rocky start with rambunctious teenager, Tyler, decides to take the gardeners motorcycle for a spin and immediately crashes while the rest of the family is enjoying their afternoon tea. Things really begin to spiral out of control when Ed falls ill that evening and later passes away from an apparent poisoning. The last place he ate was his afternoon tea at Tea by the Sea during Tyler’s joyride, so Lily’s beautiful shop is temporarily closed. Lily points out that Ed was the only one who fell ill, so it must have been something in his herbal tea that he brought with him that had to have been tampered with. But who would want Ed dead? Lily is about to find out and hopefully make it out alive.

This is one cozy series not to miss! MURDER IN A TEACUP is the second installment in the Tea by the Sea Mystery Series set on picturesque Cape Cod, by Vicki Delany. The drama starts to unfold immediately when Sandra and her family descend on Rose’s B & B. It’s pure tension as family allegiances are at play and adding Heather’s in-laws to the mix reveals odd family ties that only add more strife. The storytelling to shape and then unravel these ties was brilliant. I thought I had the killer pegged, only to be thrown into a new plot twist with an ending that I absolutely did not see coming. The character development of Rose, Lily, Bernie, and Simon is moving along at a great pace, and I’m looking forward to seeing where they go next with a hope that a romance or two will bloom.

MURDER IN A TEACUP is book two in the Tea by the Sea Series but can be read as a standalone.

National bestselling author Vicki Delany’s delightful Tea by the Sea mystery series continues, as Cape Cod tearoom proprietress and part-time sleuth, Lily Roberts, stirs up trouble when she unwittingly serves one of her grandmother’s B&B guests a deadly cup of tea . . .

Lily has her work cut out for her when a visit from her grandmother Rose’s dear friend, Sandra McHenry, turns into an unexpected—and unpleasant—McHenry family reunion. The squabbling boils over and soon Tea by the Sea’s serene afternoon service resembles the proverbial tempest in a teapot. Somehow, Lily and her tearoom survive the storm, and Sandra’s bickering brethren finally retreat to Rose’s B&B. But later that evening, a member of their party—curmudgeonly Ed French—dies from an apparent poisoning and suddenly Tea by the Sea is both scene and suspect in a murder investigation!

Mercifully, none of the other guests fall ill. They all ate the same food, but Ed always insisted on bringing his own special blend of herbal teas. So it seems, amid the whining and dining, someone snuck up to one of Lily’s cherished teapots and fatally spiked Ed’s bespoke brew, but who? Was it Ed’s long-estranged sister-in-law? Did teenage troublemaker Tyler take a prank too far? Or perhaps the family’s feuds have been steeping for longer than anyone realizes? It’s up to Lily, Rose, and their friends to get to the bottom of the poisoned pot and bag the real culprit behind the kettle murder plot.