Petal to the Metal by Annabel Chase

Hello Beautiful People! Welcome back to another book review! For this review, I get into Petal to the Metal by Annabel Chase which is the first book of The Bloomin’ Psychic series.

Main Characters:

• Mia Thorne: After a few blows to her confidence is offered the opportunity to move into her Aunt Hazel’s home after she passes. Starts to unlock new things about herself when she moves into the home and starts exploring the town.
• Dane Fairfax: Sultry lawyer who takes a liking to Mia when she moves into Hazel’s home
• Scarlet York and Patrick Beaumont: Newberry residents who become friends of Mia’s when she moves in, they help her get acclimated to Red Clover (Hazel’s home)

My Review

I usually don’t read cozy mysteries I definitely tend to read more intense mysteries and thrillers. Going into Petal to the Metal I was honestly a bit nervous I wasn’t going to like it. I am not sure how this book ended up on my list although it was from a while ago, but I decided to give it a try nonetheless. Despite my initial worries I ended up liking the book a lot and found it to be a nice break from the type of mysteries I usually read.

I gave Petal to the Metal an 8/10 rating. I found myself to end up really liking the main character Mia, but I will say that she was one of the few characters I really liked in this book. A lot of the other characters were a bit insufferable and a bit of just a general eye roll to be totally honest. I am also not usually much of a romance person but I found myself getting pulled into the romance parts of the book. Mia ends up having brothers kind of battling over her after she’s been in this new town for a day and I was just getting pulled into the drama of it all.

I was a bit disappointed at the quickness of the book, I just felt a bit rushed to me. I noticed that it seems all the books in the series are on the shorter side, but I found myself a bit disappointed at the end that it was already ending because I felt like I barely got into the story. I definitely want to check out the other books, but I have a feeling that the second book and the first could have been combined together to just make it a longer more satisfying story. I do definitely get though that the author just seemed to make shorter books and that’s why we don’t get into a whole lot in the first book.

I thought the dynamic between the characters was fun although at times I did find myself cringing a bit at the clichés of some characters and their actions. It did make it an easy book to follow though because each character was very distinctive in the role they were playing for the growth of the story. I also found myself cringing a bit at the main character Mia’s nosing into police business. When Mia moved into her aunt’s home, a friend of her aunt was found dead in the backyard. Mia gets a bit too involved in the investigation, and I get that’s the point of the book but I also like books where things are more realistic. I also was a bit disappointed that this book didn’t get much into Mia’s clairvoyant powers, it mostly focuses on her moving into the house, getting settled, and starting to discover she may have more connection to the witching world than she thinks. It also focuses mostly on Mia finding a body in the garden of the house when she moves in.

I mean, all in all, this was a fun, quick, cozy mystery, that was enjoyable to get into. I think that the lack of gore was a nice switch-up from what I usually check out so I really enjoyed the light-hearted nature of the book.

Summary and Commentary

The book starts off with 42-year-old Mia heading into her office job. It’s a special day for her because she’s planning to surprise propose to her boyfriend with a flash mob. I won’t lie this made me cringe a little so I wasn’t sure that I would like this book but once you get past this part it definitely gets better. The flash mob proposal does not go in her favour and her boyfriend denies the proposal. Not only that but the video of the proposal failure ended up on the internet, and since Mia did this at her workplace, her boss was not happy about the way it represented the company. She gets fired! I did roll my eyes at this because I feel like you can’t get fired for this… I mean maybe you can but it’s not like Mia uploaded the video so I don’t know it just seemed odd to me. Nonetheless, her bad luck doesn’t stop there. When she heads home her boyfriend, whose name is the only one on their lease, has changed the locks. Well damn! How much worse can it get for this poor lady? Definitely starting her off in a rough way in the book.

Furthermore, she finds out from the front desk guy that this lock change was not just planned today. Apparently, her man had been seeing someone else behind her back and planned to dump her and move on with this other woman. He had been planning for a while to end the relationship and just wasn’t expecting her to propose. Now single, jobless, and with no place to live Mia has hit rock bottom. On top of this, we find out that her father, who was her number one supporter, died many years before, and she has a toxic relationship with her mother. To keep it short her mom’s just a huge bitch. I am not sure if the loss of her husband caused it or what but she’s very much the typical terrible mom character. Mia has to grit her teeth and call her mother for help. It turns out her mother has a better solution for her. Her Aunt Hazel, her father’s sister, had passed some months ago and left her home for Mia. Mia had never met Hazel as her mother kept her estranged from that side of the family so it was a surprise. I was like well dang that’s sure lucky. The home is in Pennsylvania in a small town that’s a very different setting from the busy city life Mia is used to.

When Mia travels to the town of Newberry to claim the home she finds a quaint quiet town. She finds that Hazel’s home is a cute cabin with a large garden. The home also comes with a cat named Ophelia. The garden at Hazel’s home has depleted since her death, but oddly with the arrival of Mia to the home a single rose blames, it’s an odd occurrence and the realtor says some weird things to her about the home knowing she’s Hazel’s kin but Mia brushes it off. When Mia goes to the lawyer’s office to sign some papers she meets the dashing Dane Fairfax. A quiet, but also bold lawyer, Dane quickly catches Mia’s eye. As it turns out she seems to catch him as well. As soon as this character was introduced I instantly assumed he would become a love interest, and I was into it. It turns out that in order for Mia to sell the home she must live there for a year. It seems like Hazel wanted her to stay there for some reason. Dane gives Mia a letter from Hazel that was left for her. When Mia reads it she discovers a missing page which is strange, considering it gets left off of a cliffhanger. It seems like Dane is going to ask Mia on a date or something but she gets all weird so it doesn’t happen.

When Mia gets back to Red Clover (the name of Hazel’s home) two people show up who introduce themselves as Scarlet and Patrick. Residents of Newberry who have come by the home to welcome Mia, you know small-town things. I’ll be real I hated the character Patrick. He’s just so mean and rude for no reason and just tosses it off as it being his quirky personality. Scarlet offers her services to Mia saying she can help her get Hazel’s garden back into working order. Mia is ecstatic for the help as she doesn’t have much experience working on things like that. The two offer to take Mia out for a fun night and Mia agrees since she may as well get to know the new place she will be living in for a year. In the house, Mia starts to get the vibe that Hazel is into some witchy things based on the letter she left and some things like tarot cards in the home. Mia starts to wonder if things she brushed off as consciences or just being nothing were actually her clairvoyant powers. She calls her mother to ask her about her dad and if he ever talked about these things but her mom brushes Hazel and dad’s beliefs off as being crazy.

Mia struggles a bit with Ophelia the cat and soon after Mia moves in Ophelia bites her and runs off. Mia goes looking for her and stumbles upon a body hidden in Hazel’s large garden. It turns out to be a woman named Gladys Spencer who was a close friend of Hazel’s. This is a shocking way for Mia to start off in the home and she’s quite disturbed by the whole thing. Since Mia is new in this little town she’s instantly put into the lead for being a suspect. Man Mia just seems to have terrible luck anywhere she goes. They aren’t sure about the time of death, and since Mia hadn’t been to this part of the garden show couldn’t speak to how long it could have been there. In the investigation process, Mia meets Dane’s brother who is a detective for the police. Turns out the brothers have something in common and the brother also takes a liking to Mia. I am like okay you go, girl, still got it.

Patrick and Scarlet go to cheer Mia up, and Mia finds out that Patrick is also clairvoyant and is very connected to the spirit world. He wants to do a séance and Mia agrees because she wonders if maybe they can find out who really killed Gladys so that Mia can clear her name. Patrick and Scarlet find the séance to be a failure when they can’t summon Gladys’s spirit but Mia (clearly the only one) is seeing a ghostly figure in the room. This further makes her question if she may really have powers. Detective Fairfax comes over early the next morning to Red Clover to ask Mia if she has her bus ticket from when she travelled in so they can confirm the time. He tells Mia that Gladys was found to have a bacteria in her that is only found in cats and that Mia may have it as well from when Ophelia bit her. This also created an assumption that Ophelia also bit her at some point. Detective Fairfax asks her on a date and Mia wonders if it’s because he actually likes her, or if it’s because he knows his brother may like her. Mia didn’t agree to the date and I was like thank god because I had a feeling he only liked her because his brother did as well. When Mia goes to take Ophelia to the vet to see if she really does have the bacterial infection she runs into Dane. Dane asks her out and Mia says yes. I am glad she agreed to the one who actually liked her and not the bad boy exciting one.

The date is going well with Mia and Dane. On the date, Mia meets someone and he turns out to be Gladys’s son Carlton. Carlton tells her about how his mother left her inheritance for his cousin Kurt, and that since he always did well for himself, his mother wanted to take care of Kurt. I mean this seemed like weird info to share so early on but whatever. Mia gets some weird visions but doesn’t know what to make of them, and seems to still be denying a bit that Red Clover may be bringing out her powers. The next day when Scarlet and Mia go to the local library Mia runs into Kurt. She decided to talk to him, and I wondered why she felt so inclined to do all this inspecting. It just seemed odd to me, and honestly like it wasn’t any of her business. When Mia meets him she instantly gets the feeling that Kurt would have had nothing to do with the death of his aunt. He wasn’t aware of the inheritance nor did he care, if anything he just seemed like a kind person who was grieving a close family member.

When Mia is at Red Clover someone comes around curious to know if Mia is taking over Hazel’s practice. Mia finds out that Hazel was offering her clairvoyant services to the townspeople. Mia starts to wonder more and more how connected Hazel is to the witching arts. It’s also found out that a murder weapon for Gladys was found and that it was Kurt’s baseball bat, that was covered in his fingerprints. Despite this, Mia is still persistent in her belief that Kurt had nothing to do with it, but she can’t put into words why she would feel this way. Mia meets Casey who was Hazel’s old boss when she worked for a cleaning company. Mia finds out that Patrick and Scarlet didn’t know Hazel as well as they made it seem to Mia, and that Scarlet was always after Hazel to let her help in the garden, but Hazel never agreed. Mia started to wonder if the only reason they became friends with her was that they wanted something from her. She started to question as well if they had something to do with Gladys. She shook off these feelings though as that all seemed really outlandish to her.

Mia continues to snoop in places that she really has no business being in. She goes to talk to other people who were connected to Gladys to get more answers on who may have wanted to hurt her. I mean at this point it really only seemed like it could be her son, Patrick, or Scarlet, so it was more a question of who it would be at this point. When Mia wakes up the next morning she finds a haunted doll from Patrick’s collection in her home. Patrick didn’t bring it there so I wondered if this was supposed to be a warning or something. However it turns out Ophelia probably brought it into the home, but why was the big question. I again assumed she was warning Mia about something. That next day Patrick and Scarlet come over to talk with Mia. They express to her that they feel like she’s a witch like Hazel was, and she has parts of herself she could be tapping into more. I wondered if this was a distraction or something if they felt like Mia was onto them.

With Kurt arrested for the murder of Gladys Mia takes it very personally and feels like she needs to help get Kurt out of this. When Mia is out for dinner with Patrick and Scarlet she gets this feeling that someone in the space is connected to Kurt. She eventually finds out that Kurt was giving English lessons to a family of illegal immigrants. On the night Gladys was murdered he was teaching them. He didn’t say anything to the police about his alibi because he worried that the family would be deported if it was found out they were illegal. Look I felt like it was very convenient that she managed to run into this guy and make all these connections to Kurt, just seemed a bit easy to me. Mia decides that she needs to tell the police and feels confident that since it’s a small town they won’t deport the family. With Mia’s new info to police Kurt was let out of jail, but the issue of who killed Gladys still remains.

Mia decides to go talk with Carlton to see how he’s holding up with everything, and since he’s an accountant to see if he can help her with her finances. When she arrives at his office she’s surprised to see it looks like the office is closing down permanently. Carlton insists it’s just that he’s moving offices but Mia senses something else is going on. She notices while talking with him that he has a mark resembling a cat bite mark on his hand. It all started to come together that he most likely didn’t know his mother was leaving her inheritance to his cousin and assumed it would be him. He killed her to get the inheritance and then learned the news that he got nothing. This turns out to be exactly what happens. Mia pieces together the puzzle and Carlton seems to know she’s figured it out. Mia is able to take Carlton down before he gets to her. I felt like the ending was a bit rushed, to be honest.

The book ends with Mia being warned by the chief of police to keep her nose in her own business next time, and Dane asking her out on another date. He also ended it off with a kiss which was sweet to see. Mia then finds the missing page from Hazel’s letter, and in it, she’s told about all the ways in which she is special. It was a heartwarming way to end the story, and I definitely want to check out the second book.

I hope you enjoyed this review! Have you checked out this series before? What did you think? Feel free to check out my socials @baddiebookreviews to be kept up to date for when I drop a new review.