Family Jewels

by Denise Grover Swank

November 29, 2016 · DGS

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C+

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Family Jewels is a mystery that features two best friends who own a landscaping/ plant nursery business and also solve mysteries. It’s the first in a new series, an offshoot of the Rose Gardner mystery series, but you don’t have to have read the previous series to enjoy this book. There’s also a strong romantic subplot and lots and lots of unresolved sexual tension. The violence takes place off screen so it’s a non-scary, non-gory mystery as well.

Family Jewels does contain a brief, off-screen moment of animal abuse (don’t worry, the dog is fine), and I’ve spoiler-ed out that portion of the review so as not to upset anyone. Animal abuse is one of my few hard-lines in reading, and while I was upset by that passage (more below), and I didn’t find it traumatic enough to keep me from finishing the book.

Rose Gardner (appropriately named) is the owner of a landscaping business and plant nursery in southern Arkansas. Her best friend Neely Kate works for her. She has a cute dog named Muffy who wears a collar that makes her look like a daisy.  Rose also has the ability to have visions of a person’s future when she touches them. It’s implied that these visions once came unbidden, but now Rose is able to control them.

Rose and Neely Kate also solve mysteries because of course they do. In this book they are hired by a local named Raddy Dyer to find his family jewels. Not his testicles, his actual family jewels. Raddy’s grandmother died leaving him what he believed to be costume jewelry. He gave it to his now ex. Raddy has learned that he jewelry was not fake, and one of the larger pieces is worth tens of thousands of dollars. Problem is, his ex might have pawned the jewelry or his mom might have it or who knows what. Raddy needs the necklace back in order pay off gambling debts, but he’s kind of a shit basket, so no one is going to talk to him about it anyway.

Enter Rose and Neely Kate. It seems like a fairly straight forward job-check pawn shops, talk to Raddy’s family and his ex-but of course it’s not.

The man Raddy owes money to is Bad News and he wants the necklace and is willing to hurt people to get it.

There’s a strong romantic element here too. Rose has previously worked with a man named James Malcolm who runs the area’s criminal underworld. Somehow the necklace is all tied into these criminal dealings, which brings James back into Rose’s world.

I was kind of surprised to find out that that rural, southern Arkansas had such a complex and large criminal underbelly, but what the hell do I know. Maybe Wisconsin does too and I just don’t know about it. Maybe it involves cow theft. Or dairy larceny. Actually, I would read that book.

There’s a ton of unresolved sexual tension between James and Rose. Like of the Elyse-bites-her-lip-while-reading variety. I’m willing to suspend a lot of disbelief on the whole mafia prince thing (I loved Katee Robert’s O’Malley’s series) but I also know that’s a hard pass for a lot of people. I also the love when the “will they/won’t they” is done well in a mystery series.

It may have been better explained in the previous series, but we don’t know exactly what running a criminal empire means exactly as far as James is concerned. It’s mentioned that he doesn’t deal in prostitution, but that’s it. Since his illegal activities aren’t catalogued it made me easier to like James and not be aware of the fact that’s actually a criminal king-pin.

What I really loved though was the relationship between Rose and Neely Kate. Both women have recently gone through tough break ups, and Neely Kate is reeling from some substantial family issues. Both women are hurting and healing, and they navigate this space of quiet, loving support beautifully. It’s a place where you clean up the dishes so your friend can take a hot bath after dinner. It’s a place where it’s okay if you don’t want to talk about it right now. It’s a place where you support your bestie when she pours ice tea on her high school nemesis’s head because she Said Some Shit and now suddenly you might be in a bar fight.

This book is also full of charm and is often quite funny, and now Neely Kate’s favorite non-swear “crappy doodles” is mine as well.

I did struggle with the resolution of the mystery, and felt that it got overly complicated at the end. I was able to follow what was happening, but I think a lot of it could have been streamlined.

I do need to talk about the animal abuse section a bit because it bugged me enough to drop the grade down from a B to a C+. I’ve spoilered it out so you can skip this part entirely.

The other factor that lead me to giving this book a C+ was that Raddy is a terrible person and so are a lot of the people involved in the missing necklace. As a result, I had a hard time sympathizing with anyone other than Rose and Neely Kate. I wouldn’t say I sympathized with James so much as acknowledged him as the series’ likely romantic lead, and filed him away in my head as such. I didn’t really care what happened to Raddy or the necklace, but I having so much fun with the heroines that I had to keep going.

Family Jewels had some issues that kept me from fully engaging in the mystery, but the main characters of Rose and Neely Kate are so delightful, and UST between James and Rose so intense, that even though I had problems with this book, I immediately started the second book in the series when I finished. I have pretty half-hearted feelings toward this installment, but my hopes for the rest of the series are high.