Gone with the Wings

 This is a quirky series by Leena Clover.   The main character is Meera Patel.  She is an American Indian who was born in India but has grown up in OK her whole life.  Clover does a wonderful job of blending the Indian culture in with her mystery.  She explains many of the dishes and the customs the Patel family enjoys during the book.   

The characters are very likeable and you feel like you are part of a giant family when reading the story.  Living in an area where there are lots of families from India I can easily visualize the characters and see their warm and embracing natures.  The culture loves to entertain and host and the book represents that well.   

The 2 mysteries Meera finds herself embroiled in are well written and have enough twists to keep you from guessing.  The mystery is solved for the reader at the same time as it is for the characters.

My only issue with the book was a bit of inconsistency in the timeline.  The book starts at Labor Day party and then goes backward to work up to the opening scene.  Then the timeline progresses up until Diwali.  This would be quite a number of weeks especially given how many weekends Clover describes in the story but then the wrap up includes a newspaper article that says it was only a few weeks from the initial crime.  Not a huge issue but just seemed a little inconsistent for me.  

All in all I thoroughly enjoyed the book and look forward to reading the rest of this series as well as the other series by Ms. Clover.

Gone with the Wings by Leena Clover
My rating: 4 of 5 stars 

I enjoyed reading this cozy set on the Pioneer College campus in OK. The narrator is Meera Patel who is a charming young woman caught up in and accused of being involved in 2 different mysteries in the small town. The book is mixed with lots of Indian recipes and heritage information. Most of the main characters are of South Asian decent and the author does a wonderful job of intermingling the culture into the story. She also portrays a college campus and its happenings quite accurately.
The mystery is well written and the reader followed along as Meera, Tony and Becky try to get to the bottom of the 2 cases. My only real issue with the book and why I didn't give it 5 stars is because its timeline felt a bit off. Other than that I enjoyed the book and look forward to reading more books by Leena Clover 

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Challenge Prompts

The Challenge Prompts I will use this for are:  

1. Literary Escapes-  OK
2. Cravings for a Cozy and Cloak and  Dagger #CloakDaggerChal : Book # 102
3. Cruising through cozies -  Free choice 42
4. Medical Examiner-  1 Toe Tag 
5. Six Shooter- new target 44