Scan barcode
A review by dollycas
Fatal Roots by Sheila Connolly
3.0
Dollycas’s Thoughts
This is a very hard review for me to write because this series had so much promise. I have been really enjoying my excursions to Ireland but for the second book in a row, the protagonist has driven me crazy.
Maura Donovan inherited a pub in Leap over a year ago through an agreement her grandmother, the woman who raised her, made with the previous owner. Her inheritance also included a cottage and we learn in this book several pieces of land. When she arrived she apparently signed a bunch of papers not realizing what she was signing and just went on her merry way showing up each day at the pub and returning to the cottage each night finding a dead body or two along the way. She recently reconnected with her mother and in this story meets her step-sister. She has two employees, a young lass named Rose, who is studying culinary arts so that the pub can start serving food, and Mick Sullivan, the bartender who Maura has a romantic relationship with.
Thank God for Rose and Mick because Maura knows nothing about running a business and after a year doesn’t seem willing to learn. She can’t answer basic questions about her business plans. She has a unique opportunity to get all the appliances she needs for free but has no clue what she wants or needs and passes all responsibility to Rose. Her younger sister who has just arrived in Ireland takes more interest and has more ideas than Maura.
In this story, a college student awakens Maura one morning asking to look for fairy forts on Maura’s land. I was excited to learn about the mystical fairy creations but when Maura didn’t even know what land was hers I was just shaking my head. While she may not be a farmer, her land could be rented out to make additional money to fix up the pub or other expenses but no one has ever approached Maura about this at all. That aside, the fairy forts are a very cool thing. A lot of folklore surrounds them and many believe they are best left alone and that angering the fairies could cause perilous consequences. The student offers to show Maura her maps on a computer but Maura explains she doesn’t have one and wouldn’t know how to use one if she did.
The student is joined by two classmates with equipment to help her investigate and record the fairy forts she finds but when they split up for lunch one of the students disappears. Maura gets the local garda involved and she and Mick do a little investigating on their own. They don’t find the student but do find a body buried in the center of one of the fairy forts. A body that has been there for decades. When the man is identified Maura finds there is a connection to her own past. In fact, the man’s story was an old one. A story just two people are still alive to tell, which they do after being put off for hours. Oh yes, and the student turns up too and is also connected to the old story.
I get that things in leap are laid back, at least around Sullivan’s Pub. Up the road, Maura’s mother is busy trying to get a hotel back on its feet following a murder in a previous book, but I just want Maura to be more engaged and not so lackadaisical. I like that her sister has come to visit and that Maura is making inroads with the mother that abandoned her.
My issues with Maura aside, and yes I qualified my review for the previous book the same way, there are some really good things in this story. I love Rose, she is smart and can think on her feet. The fairy fort theme was very interesting and after reading this story I want to know more. There was a lot of repetition throughout the book which was frustrating, tightening it up would make a shorter but better story.
Other series by this author have been very enjoyable and entertaining. With my Irish heritage, this series was a fave. I hope between now and the next book Maura has a grand awakening and realizes all she has been blessed with and starts to take it seriously.
This is a very hard review for me to write because this series had so much promise. I have been really enjoying my excursions to Ireland but for the second book in a row, the protagonist has driven me crazy.
Maura Donovan inherited a pub in Leap over a year ago through an agreement her grandmother, the woman who raised her, made with the previous owner. Her inheritance also included a cottage and we learn in this book several pieces of land. When she arrived she apparently signed a bunch of papers not realizing what she was signing and just went on her merry way showing up each day at the pub and returning to the cottage each night finding a dead body or two along the way. She recently reconnected with her mother and in this story meets her step-sister. She has two employees, a young lass named Rose, who is studying culinary arts so that the pub can start serving food, and Mick Sullivan, the bartender who Maura has a romantic relationship with.
Thank God for Rose and Mick because Maura knows nothing about running a business and after a year doesn’t seem willing to learn. She can’t answer basic questions about her business plans. She has a unique opportunity to get all the appliances she needs for free but has no clue what she wants or needs and passes all responsibility to Rose. Her younger sister who has just arrived in Ireland takes more interest and has more ideas than Maura.
In this story, a college student awakens Maura one morning asking to look for fairy forts on Maura’s land. I was excited to learn about the mystical fairy creations but when Maura didn’t even know what land was hers I was just shaking my head. While she may not be a farmer, her land could be rented out to make additional money to fix up the pub or other expenses but no one has ever approached Maura about this at all. That aside, the fairy forts are a very cool thing. A lot of folklore surrounds them and many believe they are best left alone and that angering the fairies could cause perilous consequences. The student offers to show Maura her maps on a computer but Maura explains she doesn’t have one and wouldn’t know how to use one if she did.
The student is joined by two classmates with equipment to help her investigate and record the fairy forts she finds but when they split up for lunch one of the students disappears. Maura gets the local garda involved and she and Mick do a little investigating on their own. They don’t find the student but do find a body buried in the center of one of the fairy forts. A body that has been there for decades. When the man is identified Maura finds there is a connection to her own past. In fact, the man’s story was an old one. A story just two people are still alive to tell, which they do after being put off for hours. Oh yes, and the student turns up too and is also connected to the old story.
I get that things in leap are laid back, at least around Sullivan’s Pub. Up the road, Maura’s mother is busy trying to get a hotel back on its feet following a murder in a previous book, but I just want Maura to be more engaged and not so lackadaisical. I like that her sister has come to visit and that Maura is making inroads with the mother that abandoned her.
My issues with Maura aside, and yes I qualified my review for the previous book the same way, there are some really good things in this story. I love Rose, she is smart and can think on her feet. The fairy fort theme was very interesting and after reading this story I want to know more. There was a lot of repetition throughout the book which was frustrating, tightening it up would make a shorter but better story.
Other series by this author have been very enjoyable and entertaining. With my Irish heritage, this series was a fave. I hope between now and the next book Maura has a grand awakening and realizes all she has been blessed with and starts to take it seriously.