In Plantation Shudders by Ellen Byron, Maggie Crozat has moved from New York to help her family’s B&B on the location of her family’s former plantation in Cajun Country. They get an assortment of guests, including a whining older man and his ever- smiling wife. At night, during a storm, the lights go out, triggering a fatal heart attack in the curmudgeon. Then his wife, in a panic, takes a pill for her anxiety and soon falls over dead as well. The sheriff, Rufus, who hates the Crozats because of an ancient feud between the families, arrives and declares the house a crime scene. Fortunately, Rufus isn’t the official investigator, but the Crozat family is alarmed to learn that the long- time detective is retiring and the replacement is Rufus’s cousin, Bo Durant.
When the tests come back showing that while the husband died naturally, the wife was poisoned, Maggie gets involved in trying to solve the case in order to save her family’s business. She is forced together with Bo and finds him actually sympathetic. Sparks begin to fly between them, but when another guest is murdered, the urgency increases. The pair must work fast before the murderer leaves the area.
I thoroughly enjoyed getting to listen to Plantation Shudders. The various characters have unique personalities, and the guests come from widely disparate backgrounds. We see a trio of frat guys, a honeymooning couple, a single man, and the Cajun Cuties, who are some women who run a Cajun fan club and bring people from New York to visit the area. Maggie, her parents, and her Gran Mere (grandmother) also get us invested in them. I really enjoyed meeting Bo and seeing the tension between him and Maggie, since they are drawn to each other but come from warring families. I especially appreciated seeing the character of Bo’s son, a boy on the autism spectrum who doesn’t speak but turns out to be highly artistic. I quickly found myself falling in love with this boy. Getting to know someone with special needs in a book will help readers see someone as a genuine individual when they encounter a person with such issues.
In addition to the characters, I really enjoyed the setting of this book. I have very little experience with the Cajun country in reading about it and have never been near the area in person. I felt that I got a better sense of the region, its issues, and its unique culture. I appreciated the tension created for Maggie that she now works as a tour guide in a plantation once owned by her own family and all the internal conflict that potentially can create.
The audio edition of the book is performed by Meredith Mitchell. She uses a very slight Southern accent for the main narration and a little stronger accent for some of the Louisiana characters, like Maggie, and a much stronger accent for someone like Gran Mere. I appreciated the way Mitchell makes the book seem even more lively than reading it visually would have done.
Plantation Shudders proved to be a well- written book that I really enjoyed. The mystery was intriguing, with an interesting solution, and the characters were fun. I give the book five stars!
To purchase this book for yourself, click here on Amazon.he characters were fun. I give the book five stars!
