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Book: “A Botanist’s Guide to Rituals and Revenge (Saffron Everleigh Mystery #4)” by Kate Khavari
Publishing Info: Crooked Lane Books, June 2025
Where Did I Get This Book: The library!
Where You Can Get This Book: WorldCat.org | Amazon | Indiebound
Book Description: Saffron Everleigh returns to Ellington Manor after her grandfather suffers a heart attack. Back in her childhood home for the first time in years, Saffron faces tense family relationships made worse by the presence of the enigmatic Bill Wyatt, hired on as a doctor to the ailing Lord Easting. But the man is no doctor—in reality, he is a mysterious figure involved in the trafficking of dangerous government secrets, and his presence at Ellington can only mean trouble.
When their neighbors, the Hales, invite a spiritual medium into the village who starts angling for Saffron’s mother’s attention, Saffron realizes that there is more afoot in her hometown than she originally thought. Not to mention inviting Alexander to Ellington has put their budding relationship under her family’s microscope.
As tensions rise at Ellington, Bill demands that Saffron hand over old research documents belonging to her late father. With her relatives under his power as their ‘doctor,’ Saffron fears she may be forced to surrender the files along with her hopes of ever understanding her father’s obscure legacy. Nothing and no one is as they seem at Ellington. It’s through the perfumed haze of the séance’s smoke that Saffron must search for the truth before it’s too late.
Review: It is once again time to return to post WWI England and into the world of crime and botany! As I mentioned last time I reviewed this series, I am going to read and review the most recent Saffron Everleigh mystery by Kate Khavari when it comes out next month, but I needed to play catch up! So now I’m taking on “A Botanist’s Guide to Rituals and Revenge”, in which our plant minded heroine Saffron Everleigh has to return to her family estate due to her grandfather having a heart attack, and finds that a dangerous nemesis has seamlessly placed himself there as well. And it may be true that a lot of mystery readers like a nemesis, but this time around it didn’t really work for me.
But first the positives! This biggest part of this book that worked for me was the plot about spiritualism, which had a huge resurgence after World War I due to the fact that so many soldiers died in a horrific way. Khavari has mentioned the losses that our characters, be they Saffron or her friend Elizabeth, have had to endure, with Saffron’s own father being killed in the trenches as well as her childhood sweetheart Wesley, who also happened to be Elizabeth’s brother. When Saffron, Alexander, and Elizabeth return to Ellington they find out that Elizabeth’s parents, the Hales, have hired a medium to have a seance to try and communicate with Wesley to make sure he is at peace. While none of our main characters believe in it and know the woman is a fraud, this was not uncommon during this time to see grifters who took advantage of people’s grief for monetary purposes. I really enjoyed how Khavari brought this in and made it one of the big mysteries, as they KNOW she is lying, but she sure seems to be on the level.
I also always enjoy the relationships between Saffron and her loved ones. The first and most pertinent in this book for me is her friendship with Elizabeth, who is dealing with the fallout from her suitor in the last book being a lying murderous criminal. She is deeply hurt by these revelations and isn’t doing so hot, and I enjoyed how Khavari doesn’t make this an easy experience for her and how it is causing strain between her and Saffron, who is trying to be a good friend but has her own problems. Eliza is still my favorite character in these books (with Lee being a close second, and he DOES show up here for a bit!), and it was kind of refreshing having her be more than the free spirited snarky friend. As for Alexander, I’m still not his biggest fan, but now that we are done with the will they or won’t they and he is just being a supportive boyfriend (who has to impress her incredibly judgmental family, specifically her grandparents the Lord and Lady Easting) who has his own knowledge and skills to add to the plot. I also liked the setting of the aristocratic manor of Saffron’s family, as it felt a little bit “Downton Abbey” as she deals with her snooty grandmother and her ailing grandfather, as well as the secrets that her mother Violet seems to be hiding.
But there was the other aspect of this book that had a huge theme and plot point, and that is the nefarious character of Bill, who showed up in the previous book as an antagonist and has managed to weasel his way into Saffron’s circle by masquereding as a doctor for the Lord Easting. He was introduced a bit out of the blue in the previous book, and in this book we find out he wants research from that Saffron’s father left behind. He is set up as an ultimate nemesis for Saffron, and the idea of wanting research secrets is interesting enough, but I felt like his presence made for the least amount of botany themes that we’ve seen in this series. I also didn’t enjoy their battles of the wits as much as I had hoped I would, because we’ve seen the Sherlock and Moriarty nemesis trope so many times and unless you really reclaim it, it just kind of comes off as hackneyed these days. Having the two mysteries at hand and one of them being so focused on Bill just threw the pacing off and made it feel like it dragged on and on.
“A Botanist’s Guide to Rituals and Revenge” had its ups and downs, and I hope we get a bit more back into direct botanical research and themes for the next book.
Rating 6: I enjoyed the spiritualism storyline and Saffron’s relationships are still enjoyable, but wasn’t as into this new ‘prolonged nemesis’ angle that we got with Bill as it really bogged the rest of the story down.
Reader’s Advisory:
“A Botanist’s Guide to Rituals and Revenge” is included on the Goodreads list “‘Revenge’ in the Title”.
Previously Reviewed:
The Library Ladies 