Last Updated on April 22, 2026
Any of you who regularly visit this site will know that I recently dipped my toes into the ‘Gardening/Floral’ cozy genre.
To be honest, I wasn’t even really aware that there were so many sub-genres, but that aside, after I finished Murder Among The Roses by Liz Fielding, I went on the search for a few more green thumb related mysteries.
That was when I stumbled across A Deadly Arrangement by Annie Adams. It turns out to be the first of the Flower Shop Mysteries, and whether or not I will ever pick up the second one remains to be seen.
This is unusual because I love a good, cozy mystery series. Once a character grabs me, I’m hooked and will happily read as many as the author can churn out.
However, I had sooooo many issues with this particular book that it’s a miracle I even finished it.
I don’t want this review to be a pile-on, so before I get into the aspects that troubled me, let me give you a quick recap of the story.
Meet Florist Quincy McKay
A Deadly Arrangement (also published as The Final Arrangement and Pushing Up Daisies) centres around the life of one Quincy McKay, a small-town florist in Hillside, Utah.
Quincy is divorced, inherited the florist from her Aunt, is one of three sisters and has an overbearing mother.
Absolutely everything in Quincy’s life is mayhem. If there’s even the remotest chance that our leading lady can fall over, knock something over, say the wrong thing or do the wrong, then she 100% will.
In the midst of trying to keep the flower shop in business, one of her rivals, Derrick Gibbons, is murdered and found dead in a casket at the local funeral parlor.
For some inexplicable reason, Quincy, as she had a minor run-in with him, finds herself in Detective Arroyo’s crosshairs.
Thankfully, the oh-so-gorgeous Detective Alex Cooper is on hand to reassure Quincy that she isn’t about to be done for murder.
But when various incidents threaten Quincy’s life and livelihood, she decides to get to the bottom of what really happened to Derrick.
Oh Dear! The Problems Keep Mounting
I knew going into this book that I wasn’t about to read a masterpiece, and that’s ok. However, I still have some standards, almost none of which were met by this hodge-podge of nonsense.
Let’s start with the biggest criticism. We know from relatively early on that Quincy is divorced, and it turns out her ex was incredibly abusive and physically violent. Basically, she’s lucky to be alive.
Her mother refers to this episode in Quincy’s by saying, “You always have tended to exaggerate. I’m sorry that your husband wasn’t always easy to get along with, but we all have our faults”. I’m sorry, but what now??????
I should point out that she says that as part of a conversation about Quincy’s concerns that her sister Allie is also being physically abused by her boyfriend, Brad.
Mother of the year, she most definitely is not.
Continuing on this particular thread, Allie calls over to Quincy’s house after having clearly been beaten by Brad. She fell down the stairs’ is the excuse; of course it is, and once Quincy states that they won’t let it happen again, they promptly watch a movie on TV.
Hot Detective Alex calls over, and within seconds, we’ve moved on from the battered Allie so Quincy can get butterflies and swoon over the cute guy at the door.
Don’t get me started on that weird relationship. Quincy is a grown woman who seems to think that two dates and one kiss are enough to constitute a relationship that warrants being told exactly where her man is at all times.
When Alex does have to leave (he’s on an investigation), she tells him, via a voicemail, that his leaving without saying goodbye was worse than what her ex-husband had done to her.
At this stage, she’s known him for about 10 days, and I’m beginning to think that our Quincy has some serious issues.
Of course, they all get resolved. Alex is really only trying to help her, she finds the killer, Brad gets his comeuppance and her mother gets over the fact that Alex is a ‘beer drinker’.
The beer drinking is apparently way way worse than both of her daughters being battered by their partners…but hey, we all have our priorities!
Should You Bother With This Book?
My opinion, for what it’s worth is no, you should not bother with this book. It’s ridiculously convoluted and reduces incredibly serious matters to mere annoyances that have to be dealt with in order for Quincy to fall into Alex’s arms.
The plot resolution and how all of the pieces fall into place requires a huge imagination and isn’t even remotely satisfying.
Quincy, as a lead, is an idiot in every single sense of the word. She’s the girl in the horror movie who goes down into the basement while the rest of us are screaming, ‘don’t go down into the basement!!!!!!’
Why is she like this? Who knows. Maybe Annie Adams wanted to paint a picture of a woman with flaws, thinking she would be relatable. I have news for you. She is not.
Instead, she is endlessly frustrating, incapable of making a half-decent or rational decision, and I wouldn’t trust her to make a decent bouquet of flowers, not to mind solve a murder!
There’s More in the Series
Despite the lukewarm-ish response to the book when it was published under its previous names, somebody saw fit to keep printing the series.
If you don’t want to take my word for it and instead decide to dive into the Mormon world of floristry in Hillside, Utah then there are four more books available.
They are:
- The Body and the Bouquet
- Blood Under the Mistletoe
- Forget Me Not
- A Thorny End
Good luck – you’re gonna need it!
