I love Olly Smith on Saturday Kitchen – and I love wine (I am typing this with a glass of Doctors’ Marlborough New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc at hand, described as “an amazingly pungent white with tropical fruit and herbaceous aromas and a racy, off-dry finish. Dr John Forrest’s love of innovation helped to produce this lower alcohol, full flavoured style” – so I had high hopes for his debut novel. Here is the blurb:

“🍷In an idyllic Sussex town, murder is fermenting… 🍷
Barclay Flint is the charmingly eccentric proprietor of The Bottle Bank wine shop, nestled in a picturesque Sussex town renowned for its gloriously anarchic Bonfire Night celebration.
Barclay can taste a kaleidoscopic universe in a single glass of wine and delights in matching customers to the grapes of their dreams. But when his close friend, struggling regenerative vineyard owner Victor Crawshaw, is found dead, Barclay finds himself a prime suspect.
To crack the case and clear his name, Barclay must deploy his wine detection skills and follow his nose through the rolling Sussex hills where a tangle of old resentments and rivalries awaits to ensnare him.
With a killer on the loose and Bonfire Night fast approaching, the town crackles with anticipation. This year the fireworks might not be the only things to explode…
Join Barclay and his friends from The Bottle Bank in this sparkling debut novel by wine expert Olly Smith. It’s time to uncork the most exuberant and irresistible mystery of the year!“

I have to say I struggled with this from the start – but being the absolute pedant that I am, I couldn’t give up (despite it pushing me into a bit of a reading slump) The over use of excessive adjectives felt like a never ending wine review, where the word total needed to be about treble what it should have been. I found the style exhausting and wanted just to stop reading many, many times. But I am incredibly stubborn, and didn’t want to be beaten. With hindsight – I should have walked away at about 10%. I sometimes feel ‘celebrity’ authors are given leeway that an unknown author just would not be afforded. Maybe I’m being a cow – and perhaps if you have wine knowledge more extensive than ABC (Anything But Chardonnay) this would wet / whet your whistle – but I found it too verbose and meandering for me. I’ve seen the book described as a cosy crime in the style of the Thursday Murder Club books – but that would not be my view at all.

The book was written in the third person with an extensive cast of characters – none of whom I found particularly engaging. I didn’t feel that I was ‘Team’ any of them. I had to keep reading to see who had killed Victor – but I really didn’t care who or why!

I feel bad being so negative – as Olly Smith seems like a lovely bloke – but should he write another book, it won’t be one I request. But thank you to the publisher and Net Galley for my ARC – and sorry for being such a cow

(or as this book would say, such a “magnificent bovine: a placid, velvety-muzzled, ruminant beauty, adorned in a lustrous, ebony-and-ivory tapestry. A serene, cud-chewing behemoth who wanders the emerald-hued pastures, bearing liquid-dark, soulful eyes, a pendulous, milk-laden udder, and a rhythmic, swaying gait. A gentle, pastoral sovereign of the sprawling, sun-dappled meadows.”)

Thank you to the publisher and Net Galley for my advance review copy.