Fatal Roots

“Fatal Roots” Is the 8th instalment in “A County Cork Mystery” series by Sheila Connelly. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and have purchased a few of the previous books.

Some secrets are too big to stay buried…
A few months ago, Boston expat Maura Donovan was rekindled with her mother after more than twenty years of absence. Since then, Maura has been getting accustomed to Irish living, complete with an inherited house and a pub named Sullivan’s. But now, her mother has returned–and she’s brought Maura’s half-sister in tow. To make matters more confusing, a handful of Cork University students are knocking on Maura’s door asking about a mystical fairy fort that happens to be located on Maura’s piece of land.

The lore indicates that messing with the fort can cause bad luck, and most everyone is telling Maura not to get too involved for fear of its powers, but Maura is curious about her own land, and she definitely doesn’t buy into the superstition. Then one of the students disappears after a day of scoping out the fort on Maura’s property.

Maura treads carefully, asking the folks around town who might have an idea, but no one wants anything to do with these forts. She has to take matters into her own hand–it’s her land, after all. But when she uncovers a decades-old corpse buried in the center of the fort, nothing is for certain.

Even though this is the first book I have read in the series I was able to follow along easily so it can be read as a stand alone. I really enjoyed it and have since purchased a few other books in the series.

The protagonist Maura is a strong, independent woman who is finding out who she is and where her family came from. The characters are well rounded and seem real as I could relate to each of them. The town of Leap in County Cork is interesting, and the author brought the area to life with her descriptions.

The mystery is interesting and well plotted, and there are plenty of twists and turns in this story. I kept guessing and second-guessing myself on who the body was right to the very end. There is also the secondary story of Maura and her mother Helen, along with half sister Susan and where it is heading. Overall the story moves at a steady pace, but I did take longer to finish than normal and I’m not sure if that was to do with the holidays. I recommend this book to all my mystery lover friends, and plan on buying the complete series.

I requested and received an Advanced Readers Copy from Crooked Lane Books and NetGalley. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Fatal Roots – Although I am familiar with Shelia Connolly’s writing, this is my first read in her County Cork series. I loved the setting. I found myself using an Irish accent when reading the various Irish characters’ dialogue. The plot had a twist to it that I certainly didn’t see coming. I will definitely go back and read this series from the beginning.

Dollycas’s Thoughts

This is a very hard review for me to write because this series had so much promise. I have been really enjoying my excursions to Ireland but for the second book in a row, the protagonist has driven me crazy.

Maura Donovan inherited a pub in Leap over a year ago through an agreement her grandmother, the woman who raised her, made with the previous owner. Her inheritance also included a cottage and we learn in this book several pieces of land. When she arrived she apparently signed a bunch of papers not realizing what she was signing and just went on her merry way showing up each day at the pub and returning to the cottage each night finding a dead body or two along the way. She recently reconnected with her mother and in this story meets her step-sister. She has two employees, a young lass named Rose, who is studying culinary arts so that the pub can start serving food, and Mick Sullivan, the bartender who Maura has a romantic relationship with.

Thank God for Rose and Mick because Maura knows nothing about running a business and after a year doesn’t seem willing to learn. She can’t answer basic questions about her business plans. She has a unique opportunity to get all the appliances she needs for free but has no clue what she wants or needs and passes all responsibility to Rose. Her younger sister who has just arrived in Ireland takes more interest and has more ideas than Maura.

In this story, a college student awakens Maura one morning asking to look for fairy forts on Maura’s land. I was excited to learn about the mystical fairy creations but when Maura didn’t even know what land was hers I was just shaking my head. While she may not be a farmer, her land could be rented out to make additional money to fix up the pub or other expenses but no one has ever approached Maura about this at all. That aside, the fairy forts are a very cool thing. A lot of folklore surrounds them and many believe they are best left alone and that angering the fairies could cause perilous consequences. The student offers to show Maura her maps on a computer but Maura explains she doesn’t have one and wouldn’t know how to use one if she did.

The student is joined by two classmates with equipment to help her investigate and record the fairy forts she finds but when they split up for lunch one of the students disappears. Maura gets the local garda involved and she and Mick do a little investigating on their own. They don’t find the student but do find a body buried in the center of one of the fairy forts. A body that has been there for decades. When the man is identified Maura finds there is a connection to her own past. In fact, the man’s story was an old one. A story just two people are still alive to tell, which they do after being put off for hours. Oh yes, and the student turns up too and is also connected to the old story.

I get that things in leap are laid back, at least around Sullivan’s Pub. Up the road, Maura’s mother is busy trying to get a hotel back on its feet following a murder in a previous book, but I just want Maura to be more engaged and not so lackadaisical. I like that her sister has come to visit and that Maura is making inroads with the mother that abandoned her.

My issues with Maura aside, and yes I qualified my review for the previous book the same way, there are some really good things in this story. I love Rose, she is smart and can think on her feet. The fairy fort theme was very interesting and after reading this story I want to know more. There was a lot of repetition throughout the book which was frustrating, tightening it up would make a shorter but better story.

Other series by this author have been very enjoyable and entertaining. With my Irish heritage, this series was a fave. I hope between now and the next book Maura has a grand awakening and realizes all she has been blessed with and starts to take it seriously.

If you are looking for a thriller type story with a fast pace, exploding cars, or such this is not the book for you.
If you like to watch the slow development of characters, individually and collectively, this may be your book.
The main character is still trying to sort out how she came to own a pub and home in Ireland. What is she willing to risk with Mike? What should she do with her estranged mother and half-sister?
And who are these grad students and what do they really want with her and her property?

As soon as I read that fairy fort lore was involved in Fatal Roots by Sheila Connolly, I was all in. This story had everything I love about the series. First of all the pragmatic Maura, then mystery, suspense, drama, community and family drama along with the local fairy folklore make for an extraordinary read.

Transplant Maura is a character I can identify with like she always is. Like her, I would want to do something if what happens had happened on what is mine. The clientele of Sullivan’s are their usual sometimes helpful, sometimes obstinate, sometimes cryptic selves. Then there is family, God love them. A tad bit of romance to even it all out in Maura’s life. Yeah!.

This is the eighth book in the series but still I think someone could read it as a stand-alone. In many ways this is a pivotal book in the series; one not to be missed by fans or new fans either.

An ARC of the book was given to me by the publisher through Net Galley which I voluntarily chose to read and reviewed. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Fatal Roots by Sheila Connolly is another of the Cork County Mysteries featuring transplanted Bostonian, Maura Donovan, and her pub in Leap, County Cork. She awakens earlier than normal to a knocking at her door. She had closed the pub last night and was not quite ready to awaken. At her door she discovered a young woman who inquiring about her land and requesting permission to explore her land for fairy forts or ring forts. It seems there was a good one very near. Ciara, the archeology student at her table, had maps to prove it and invited Maura to help her explore, which she did for a while before she went into Leap to work. Ciara had two friends joining her, one with a drone with a camera, and the other with a machine that could determine if there was anything buried within the fort. When she got to the pub, Mick was already there and more than willing to share what he knew of fairy forts and other Irish lore. Shortly after a car pulled out and who should jump our but her recently discovered American mother and a young woman who turned out to be her half-sister. How much more complicated could this day get?

I am often attracted to books, which take place in a place or time that I wish to explore. I have Irish roots and love to read novels that take place in Ireland. This series has been far from a disappointment. I always learn more of Irish culture while at the same time enjoy a decent mystery and a touch of romance. Connolly, as well her heroine, Maura, is very low key and not ostentatious at all. I enjoy that in a character, as well as in an author. Connolly seems to get the tempo of life in rural Ireland and is able to convey it within her work. I loved learning about the fairy forts and other Irish myths that seem to impact the daily lives of may in the rural areas. Mick, Maura’s employee and lover, is just a low key and slow to change and I find it entirely endearing. I love this series and am proud to say it. Good work, Sheila Connolly. I recommend it.

I received a free ARC of Fatal Roots from Netgalley in exchange for a fair review. All opinions and interpretations contained herein are solely my own. #netgalley #fatalroots

Series: County Cork #9
Publication Date: 1/7/2020
Number of Pages: 237

This well-written and well-plotted series brings to life the verdant countryside of Ireland. The author’s descriptions make you feel as if you are walking into that cottage or pub or are just walking along one of the quiet lanes. I had begun to despair of Maura Donovan ever actually becoming self-aware. It seems she just floated along on the surface of her life in Boston and has done the same in the year she’s been Leap, County Cork, Ireland. She’s never asked questions about the past or the future and just sort of floated along in the here-and-now. So, I’m very happy to see that in this book she has finally started to question what happened in her family’s past that set up the current circumstances. I’m also happy that she has finally taken a further step in her relationship with Mick.

As always, there is a lot going on in this story and it keeps you jumping from page to page to find out what happens next. They are renovating and opening the kitchen at Sullivan’s Pub, Maura’s mother and step-sister arrive unexpectedly, graduate students have arrived wanting to examine the Fairy Forts that dot the countryside, and, of course, there is a dead body. Maura, Mick, garda Sean Murphy, Old Billy, and Bridget each contribute their knowledge and expertise to solve the mystery of the body that has lain in the center of the Fairy Fort for several decades.

One of the ways Maura has demonstrated her ‘floating on the surface’ mode is that she has been in Ireland for over a year and she has yet to realize the extent of what she inherited from old Mick Sullivan. When she arrived, she just signed whatever papers the lawyers told her to sign and didn’t inquire any further. She embraced the pub and the cottage – but in this book, she learns she has inherited several plots of land. At least one of those plots holds a Fairy Fort. BTW – be aware that you will hear – ad nauseum – that there was a body found on land she didn’t even know she owned.

Maura is awakened early one morning by a banging on her front door. It turns out to be an archaeology graduate student, Ciara McCarthy, from the university in Cork City. She and two friends, Darragh and Ronan, plan to map the circles, take pictures using a drone, and use ground-penetrating radar to see what might lie beneath the surface. It doesn’t take long before Darragh disappears and the search begins. Unfortunately – or fortunately – the search for Darragh leads to the discovery of a body buried directly in the center of the Fairy Fort.

Identifying the body leads to some revelations about Maura’s family’s past and Darragh’s as well. Will the discoveries lead to revenge or will it finally lay the past to rest? You’ll just have to read the book to see.

It was a delight to meet and spend time with Maura’s half-sister, Susan. She is a wonderful young lady and I look forward to spending time with her in future books. Helen, Maura’s mother, is another story. She’s trying to make amends to Maura and I applaud that – but – at the same time, she keeps excusing herself by saying she was young and desperate. That just doesn’t sound contrite to me.

As we left our visit to County Cork, the kitchen at Sullivan’s Pub was just opening its kitchen. Now, we can look forward to whatever delightful dishes Rose makes in the next book.

I definitely recommend this book and the series. I hope you will enjoy them as much as I did.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an Advanced Reader Copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Ireland, cold-case, family-dynamics, friendship

The characters are fascinating, the countryside is beautiful, the family issues are a bit confounding, and the murder is a cold case. When Maura came to Ireland about a year ago after the death of her grandmother she found that she had inherited a pub and a cottage. Now she finds that she also has fields with faerie rings and a half sister to sort out. Oh, and a body on her property buried sometime in the 1960s. Very interesting story!
I requested and received a free ebook copy from Crooked Lane Books via NetGalley. Thank you!