I was super excited but a bit nervous to be starting the latest book in the Kat Holloway series. Excited because I’ve loved every one of the books in this series, but nervous because I read Flavia de Luce a while back and realise that I fell out of love with it and what if the same thing happens to this series?

Thankfully, I really enjoyed it. In fact, this may be my favourite book in the series because of its inclusion of tea!

Death in Kew Gardens opens with Kat Holloway meeting a Chinese scholar named Li and receiving a gift of tea from him. While it would be nice for Kat if this is where everything ended, she finds out a few days later that the master of the house next door has been murdered and Li is suspect number one. Kat, however, disagrees with the police and together with Lady Cynthia and Daniel, they start looking into the murder.

First things first: I loved all the mentions of tea in this series! This book takes place after Robert Fortune has brought tea out of China and the Indian tea market has become a major supplier of tea to England. However, tea is still pretty expensive and considered a luxury. Sadly, I can’t say much about the mentions of tea in the book because the plot depends on it, but I will say that everything mentioned in the book fits in with what I know about tea in that time period (shout out to Wuyi tea!)

And as always, Kat and Daniel make a lovely pair of characters. Their relationship moved an inch further, but not by much. I’m really enjoying how they’re slowly getting to know one another and am rooting for them.

It was also fun to see Lady Cynthia and the other characters, such as Mr. Thanos and Tess. I liked that all of them continued to develop, even side characters that I didn’t normally pay much attention to. There was an interesting side-plot involving the new housekeeper that made me realise that the butler, Mr. Davis, was actually a pretty cool guy.

Overall, I really enjoyed Death in Kew Gardens. It’s a great third book in the Kat Holloway series and manages to build on the character development in the first two books. I thoroughly enjoyed this, especially all the references to tea, and look forward to reading more adventures involving Kat.

Featured Image: Photo from Canva’s Image Library