One Foot in the Grove
An Olive Grove Mystery #1
By Kelly Lane
ISBN#9780425277225
Brought to you by OBS Reviewer Daniele
Synopsis: 
In the sweet Southern town of Abundance, Georgia, home of the Knox family’s olive farm, gossip isn’t the only thing that can kill you…
After leaving a man at the altar for the second time in her life, Eva Knox decides to head home to her family’s plantation to regroup and soak in some Southern charm. But hiding from her woes is a slipperier proposition than Eva imagined. For one thing, most people in town still haven’t forgiven her for leaving local boy Buck Tanner at the altar and hightailing it up north eighteen years ago. For another, a death on her family’s farm soon makes her the lead suspect in a murder case—and the sheriff investigating is none other than Eva’s old flame Buck.
With the police putting the squeeze on her, it’s up to Eva and her sisters, Pep and Daphne, to figure out who could have possibly left a dead body in their olive grove. And they’ll have to catch the greasy killer quickly—because it looks like Eva has been picked as the murderer’s next victim… (Goodreads)
Review:
After a very public breakup with her locally famous fiancé on their wedding day is spun to look like her fault, Eva returns home after eighteen years in Boston to work and live at her family’s plantation turned B&B and olive grove. Though her family welcomes her back with open arms, the same cannot be said about the residents of Abundance, Georgia. The majority of folks still hold ill feelings about Eva because she left her first fiancé, who is now the sheriff, at the altar, too. Things go downhill when Eva stumbles over the body of the family’s new nature guide in the grove. She recognizes him from Boston and just cannot understand what is going on. In addition, the B&B’s cook has disappeared. Circumstances make Eva the prime suspect, and after she is threatened by a guest at the B&B, she decides to investigate on her own.
I had a hard time with this freshman entry in the Olive Grove Mystery series. It is full of dreadful stereotypes, both of Southerners and Yankees. I am a Texan and lived in Georgia for a few years, and I have to say that no one, and I mean no one, talks like the Knox sisters do. Every time one of them used y’all as a singular pronoun I cringed. And they did it a lot…in every conversation.
I am sure that the above greatly influenced my opinion of the characters, but I have to say that I did not like any of them very much, with the exception of Precious and the mysterious Scottish neighbor. Daphne is supposed to be a classy Southern Belle, but she comes across as a brainless business woman with eccentricities that go beyond eccentric. Pepper-Leigh is a bit better in all her Goth leather, but she comes across as trashy. We never learn why Eva and Buck did not get married, and this made it hard to get a read on Eva. She seemed immature and did a lot of stupid things in her investigating.
The mystery itself was over-the-top and totally unbelievable. The suspects and their motivations were silly, and again, horribly stereotypical. Even though there is one final twist at the end, it was not unexpected.
I am sorry to say that One Foot in the Grave was not an enjoyable read for me. If you do not think that you would be bothered by the things I have pointed out, then please take a chance and read it. I hope other readers find greater pleasure in it than I did.
