{"id":5484,"date":"2024-01-03T06:28:47","date_gmt":"2024-01-03T14:28:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=5484"},"modified":"2024-01-03T06:28:47","modified_gmt":"2024-01-03T14:28:47","slug":"kat-ailes-the-expectant-detectives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/kat-ailes-the-expectant-detectives\/","title":{"rendered":"Kat Ailes: The Expectant Detectives"},"content":{"rendered":"

Expectant Detectives #1<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>This charmingly goofy, messy, funny mystery follows a very pregnant Alice and her partner Joe as they forsake the busy (and expensive) chaos of London for \u201cthe country.\u201d\u00a0 They\u2019ve chosen the tiny village of Penton in the Cotswolds on the theory that a \u201cposh hippy\u201d community will be a good fit.\u00a0 They bring along their gorgeous, if stupid, dog, Helen, who makes the moving trip to Penton extra nightmarish by vomiting all over the car.<\/p>\n

They jam their things into their cute, tiny rental cottage, sleeping on an air mattress.\u00a0 Alice and Joe seem to have mixed feelings on their upcoming blessed arrival and make a stab at joining their new community (and reality) by attending a pre-natal class, where they meet other pregnant mums in the vicinity.<\/p>\n

Their first class takes off with a bang as one of the mums gives birth during class and the owner of the shop downstairs, which sells herbal remedies, is found dead over his tea.\u00a0 Ailes introduces her cast of characters via the class: the grumpy, partnerless Aisla; Hen and her partner Antoni, who seem more together than the rest of them (and it\u2019s Hen who gives birth in class); and Poppy and Lin, an LGBTQ couple who seem the sanest and most loving of the bunch.<\/p>\n

The women form a loose detection group, focusing on the local commune which appears to have its share of mysterious disappearances and deaths through the years.\u00a0 The dead man was a former member of the commune but had cut off all contact with its members years ago. There\u2019s a young man named Rowan hanging around who seems to be conducting some kind of investigation of his own, and the two investigations are somewhat in conflict with one another, though Alice likes Rowan despite his prickly secrecy.<\/p>\n

Ailes draws her characters well: the precise Hen, the loving couple of Poppy and Lin, and the super hippy-eco girl Aisla who is very judgy and also happens to be the sister of the cop investigating the case. Most of all she paints a picture of Alice, Joe and Helen (a hilarious dog whose terrible behavior assures that she is welcome nowhere), and their marriage, which appears to be foundering a bit as they await the birth of their child.<\/p>\n

This is a very \u201cyoung\u201d book, as it\u2019s about women expecting children and dealing with babies when they do arrive.\u00a0 It\u2019s also an almost universal experience and if you have ever spent the night with an infant who won\u2019t sleep, it\u2019s not an unfamiliar one.\u00a0 Ailes injects quite a bit of humor into her narrative \u2013 Alice is figuring out her new community with a jaded Londoner\u2019s eye and is not always feeling like she belongs.\u00a0 Sometimes she would rather be eating a cheeseburger in a McDonald\u2019s parking lot than drinking rhubarb tea or eating zucchini bread.<\/p>\n

The mystery part is a bit slippery.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t quite sure this group of new friends and fledgling detectives were going to arrive at a solution to the crime, but they do, after a couple wrong deductions.\u00a0 This is a sweet book if a tad long, but the humor and the characters made it a worthwhile read.\u00a0 — Robin Agnew<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Expectant Detectives #1 This charmingly goofy, messy, funny mystery follows a very pregnant Alice and her partner Joe as they forsake the busy (and expensive) chaos of London for \u201cthe country.\u201d\u00a0 They\u2019ve chosen the tiny village of Penton in the Cotswolds on the theory that a \u201cposh hippy\u201d community will be a good fit.\u00a0 They … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1518,484,1514,100,1516,1276,1441,1517,1515],"class_list":["post-5484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-funny-dog","tag-humor","tag-kat-ailes","tag-minotaur-books","tag-pregnancy","tag-robin-agnew","tag-series-debut","tag-the-cotswolds","tag-the-expectant-detectives"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5484"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5484\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5489,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5484\/revisions\/5489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}