The ideas and structure were clear and straightforward The epilogue tied the book together completely without having the reader once again rolling their eyes over facts that had been previously gnawed to death. This is one of my favorite series Some books are much better than others and the reader has to be patient The folks from Finch are wonderful even if the gossip vine travels faster than the speed of light they do have your best interest in mind even if they are too wrapped up in their own lives to bring Lori a casserole when she has whacked her thumb Aunt Dimity and the Wishing Well Aunt Dimity Mystery.

19 Welcome to Finch A small Cotswold Village in England Lori Shepherd moved from the U. S when she inherited a sizable estate after she discovered the secret hidden in a treasure trove of letters in Dimity s English country cottage She now lives there with her husband Bill and their two sons She now communicates with her Aunt Dimity in a very special way. In this 19th installment Australian Jack MacBride comes to Finch to settle his uncle s estate When he arrives he find his uncle s property in need of attention Lori volunteers to help him While clearing the garden they find a hidden well Lori laughingly tosses a coin into the garden s old well and makes a wish.

She is baffled to find that the wish seems to have come true Word travels fast in this little town and soon Jack has several visitors wanting to make wishes of their own More and wishes start to come true and with Aunt Dimity s help Lori tries to find out what is really going on What she discovers is that the truth is even marvelous than a magical wishing well. Dollycas s ThoughtsWhat a breathe of fresh air This book is the perfect Springtime read It is a true English mystery without any dead bodies or murderers running about Just a mystery of a wishing well and a stranger in town This author s work has been called adult fairy tales and that describes them perfectly. Who wouldn t love a wishing well that actually granted wishes The problem is one person s wish can really mess up another person s wish or their life Some of the wishes of the residents of Finch are really causing trouble Thankfully Lori is on the case She needs to solve the mystery before there is an actual murder in this quaint little village. I haven t read an Aunt Dimity story in years and when I was asked to review this one I jumped right back in and was so happy I said YES This story reads well as a stand alone too I wasn t lost at all Aunt Dimity was a friend of Lori s mother and her ghost lives on in her home and has an interesting way to communicate with Lori That s all you need to know to enjoy these wonderful stories. Whether this is your first Aunt Dimity story or you have read them all or like me you fall somewhere in between.

Nancy Atherton is not a white haired Englishwoman with a softly wrinkled face a wry smile and wise gray eyes nor does she live in a thatched cottage behind a babbling brook in a tranquil rural corner of the Cotswolds. She has never taken tea with a vicar although she drank an Orange Squash with one once and she doesn t plan to continue writing after her allotted time on earth though such plans are as well all know subject to change without notice. If you prefer to envision her as an Englishwoman she urges you to cling to your illusions at all costs she treasures carefully nurtured illusions She also urges you to read no further. Because the truth is that Nancy Atherton is a dark haired American with a generally unwrinkled face a beaming smile and hazel eyes who lives in a plain house in Colorado Springs She comes from a large gregarious family five brothers and two sisters and enjoys socializing as much as she enjoys solitude. So if you are looking for her at a convention don t look for a stately grande dame in a flowery dress Look for a woman in jeans and sneakers who s bounding around like a hyperactive gerbil. Japanese AUNT DIMITY AND THE WISHING WELL By Atherton Nancy Author Hardcover Apr 17 2014 Aunt Dimity and the Wishing Well Aunt Dimity Mystery 19 Aunt Dimity and the wishing well is a perfectly baked warm apple pie The writing is quaint and sweet In a world that is filled with strife and trouble is nice to read about a small town where things can get out of hand but where ultimately everyone makes the best of what they have and be a true community When I first picked this up I was initially put off by the designation supernatural mysterious Supernatural usually means that you either get strange hunches or hear disembodied voices guiding you towards who the real murderer is The only thing supernatural here is aunt Dimity a woman who speaks beyond the grave through an old blue journal that once belonged to her She only knows what is told her and her hunches seem to be good old fashion common sense Another thing that bothers me in a mystery series is how static characters can sometimes be the only thing changing from book to book being the murder the murder weapon and the scene of the crime but here the characters change through the course of the book Relationships change goals change and time moves forward the only person who doesn t change is Aunt Dimity and well she s already dead The last thing that differentiated this from other mystery novels is that there is no murder An Author final captured the thrill of a mystery without someone ending up dead A true cozy mystery I want to experience the magic of this story again I want to read about the small town of Finch and the wonderful people that live there I will be ordering book number one from the library as soon as I finish writing the last sentence of this review This is something I want to get my hands on as soon as possible Aunt Dimity and the Wishing Well Aunt Dimity Mystery 19 Sometimes you just want a book that is light and entertaining I haven t read others in this series but that didn t present a problem I quickly got to know the characters Finch is a village of quirky characters To read this novel you will need to suspend disbelief In the Cotswold village of Finch lives Lori Shepherd Lori has a pink stuffed rabbit and a book where writing appears from Aunt Dimity who is long dead See why I said you need to suspend disbelief It is light and whimsical Even so after Jack MacBride an Australia arrives after the death of his uncle and uncovers a wishing well that appears to work Many in the village want to make a wish and have it granted But what people wish for may not always be best for someone else. The cover perfectly depicts the whimsy of this book I thoroughly enjoyed the story and its humour until I came to the incident with Lori hitting her thumb with a hammer Then what had been funny turned ridiculous The way she and her husband carried on anyone would have thought she was dying I finished the book but it lost its charm for me from that point So what I thought might be a four star read ended up a three If you are looking for a cosy mystery this is not the book for you If you are looking for a whimsical read you should enjoy it though I m interested to see if others respond as I did after the thumb incident I wasn t convinced about the ending either Aunt Dimity and the Wishing Well Aunt Dimity Mystery 19 Thought I was getting a cozy mystery got what read like a script for a Hallmark Channel movie American ex pat housewife in the Cotswolds investigates mysterious wish granter because everyone s wish come true threatens to destroy the village Except the stakes were ridiculously low The church sexton local mechanic gets his wish to work on classic cars and horrors actually makes money and has fun doing it but THE CHURCH CEMETERY DOESN T GET MOWED and the vicar has to ask the young healthy strapping newcomer in town to do it OMG what a tragedy The protagonist the ex pat has to try to build a bird feeder ALL BY HERSELF because the sexton is too busy having fun making money to do it despite the fact she s a klutz with zero knowledge of carpentry and she BANGS HER THUMB WITH THE HAMMER Her lawyer husband rushes home from work early to whisk her to the hospital where she s given xrays antibiotics blood tests and diagnosed with a drum roll please CONTUSION Which is a 50 word for bruise She has a boo boo And she actually has to take to her sickbed and her husband all but spoon feeds her and won t let her have visitors For a boo boo Oh and she gets dehydrated In England In May In England Because they ve had sunshine and no rain for a whole 6 days It s not like she s stranded in the Australian Outback Just duck inside and get a glass of water lady Of course there s a MORAL to the story actually spelled out in the end Won t repeat it here don t want to spoil the suspense Of which there is none The mystery to be solved is who is granting wishes and why Less than halfway through the book you figure out who the wish granter is you don t care why the reason is saccharine sweet and obvious and is there ever really any doubt whether the ex pat will have her one true wish granted by the last page As for the ghost of Aunt Dimity she doesn t do much except scold and point out the obvious. 5 hours It really would be perfect for the Hallmark Channel Aunt Dimity and the Wishing Well Aunt Dimity Mystery 19 If it was not for the previous eighteen books there is no way that you would recognized all the names and faces at Hector Huggins s funeral A myriad of names are thrown at the reader and even I being a long time reader of the series had to stop and put back stories to them all. Rolling up to Hector s funeral is his beloved nephew Jack MacBride fresh from the Australian outback and here in Finch to sort out Hector s final affairs Namely the disposition of Hector s home Ivy Cottage During renovations a wishing well is discovered on the property and when Lori speaks into the wishing well for the rain to cease and her wish comes true the villagers cannot get to the well fast enough to speak their desires. Finch being Finch means that there will be no end to the chaos that ensues when wishes are suddenly granted but Lori with the help of Aunt Dimity starts to become suspicious Who is the puppet master behind the granting of the wishes There are too many coincidences for this to be anything other than planned Was it me or was Lori being overly whiney in this book Who is bedridden merely by having their thumb whacked by a hammer unable to participate in the simplest of things because her thumb is trussed up like a mummy Grated a second wish of Lori s was a surprise at the end but that does not explain why she was completely incapacitated. The final chapters in the book were very good almost as if someone else had written them Throughout most of the book the repetitiveness was burdensome At times I would have sworn full sentences and ideas were repeated Then suddenly at the end you will love this story This series is a cozy lover s favorite for a very good reason I think we all wish we had an Aunt Dimity Aunt Dimity and the Wishing Well Aunt Dimity Mystery 19

Aunt Dimity and the Wishing Well (Aunt Dimity Mystery, #19) By Nancy Atherton

0670026697

9780670026692

English

288

Hardcover

This book and the entire series epitomizes the genre of cozy mysteries Lori is an endearing main character and the village of Finch is one I would dearly love to visit I m not a fan of gossip but the villagers for the most part are so charming that I can forgive them their idle chatter In truth they all care about each other immensely and they really don t mean any harm at all This was a very easy breezy read and a nice holiday from some of the effortful books I ve been reading lately The perfect cupcake for my brain 3. 5 5 Aunt Dimity and the Wishing Well Aunt Dimity Mystery 19 I don t know why I keep reading this series I really love the first two books and after thatmostly misses I m afraid I think it s the fact that as the series rolls on the main character Lori gets less and less likeable I mean she s nosy to the point of BE and a gossip and a bad flirt and a distracted mother and wife Come on She s even rich and has a good looking super sweet husband I ve only got one of those and no I m not rich I think what irks me the most is that the books are getting increasingly improbable I still enjoyed this one than the last few but for now I ll find my dog eared copy of Aunt Dimity s Death and be satisfied with that Aunt Dimity and the Wishing Well Aunt Dimity Mystery 19 I just grabbed this at the library in audiobook format so I d have something for the car What I didn t know is that this is one of a mystery series I think it would have been much better to start at the beginning as there seem to have been a lot of references to previous books Another problem for me was that the narrator s voice was terribly grating I found myself despising all the characters because of that voice and I eventually ditched the CDs and picked up a hard copy of the book to finish it Had I started at the beginning of the series and never heard that voice I know I would have liked this much better Aunt Dimity and the Wishing Well Aunt Dimity Mystery 19 Cotswolds England May SeptemberThis story is about a well in a dead man s backyard It involves wishes meddling and unexpected outcomes I had figured out who was behind it but I didn t know why they were doing the things that they did There is also a bit of romance I knew how it ended because I have been reading these out of order but I didn t know how or where their relationship started Aunt Dimity and the Wishing Well Aunt Dimity Mystery 19 Cozy yes Mystery pretty wimpy If you re dying to catch up on the village of Finch and its residents read this book If you want to read a mystery don t waste your time with this Aunt Dimity and the Wishing Well Aunt Dimity Mystery 19.

.That ll be her And she d love to meet you.Got through the book in about 2