ARC Review: A Botanist's Guide to Rituals and Revenge by Kate Khavari

A Botanist's Guide to Rituals and Revenge
Author: Kate Khavari
Series: Saffron Everleigh Mystery (Book 4)
Publication: Crooked Lane Books (June 10, 2025)

Description: Brilliant botanist Saffron Everleigh faces her hardest challenge yet when she returns to her childhood home in the fourth book in the charming Saffron Everleigh mystery series.

Saffron Everleigh returns to Ellington Manor after her grandfather suffers a heart attack. Back in her childhood home for the first time in years, Saffron faces tense family relationships made worse by the presence of the enigmatic Bill Wyatt, hired on as a doctor to the ailing Lord Easting. But the man is no doctor—in reality, he is a mysterious figure involved in the trafficking of dangerous government secrets, and his presence at Ellington can only mean trouble.

When their neighbors, the Hales, invite a spiritual medium into the village who starts angling for Saffron’s mother’s attention, Saffron realizes that there is more afoot in her hometown than she originally thought. Not to mention inviting Alexander to Ellington has put their budding relationship under her family’s microscope.

As tensions rise at Ellington, Bill demands that Saffron hand over old research documents belonging to her late father. With her relatives under his power as their ‘doctor,’ Saffron fears she may be forced to surrender the files along with her hopes of ever understanding her father’s obscure legacy. Nothing and no one is as they seem at Ellington. It’s through the perfumed haze of the séance’s smoke that Saffron must search for the truth before it’s too late.

My Thoughts: The fourth Saffron Everleigh historical mystery has a very Gothic feel. Saffron has been called home because her grandfather has had a heart attack. She brings her boyfriend Alexander Ashton and her best friend Elizabeth Hale with her. Saffron hasn't been home for years. She left after a disagreement with her grandparents about her future. They want her to live a standard aristocratic life. She is a botanist who wants a future in academia.

She arrives home to find that her grandfather's new "doctor" is her old nemesis Bill Wyatt, a mysterious figure she has clashed with before. Wyatt threatens harm to her family if she doesn't help him unearth her deceased father's secrets. But her agoraphobic mother has destroyed all of her father's papers and journals.

Added to the tensions at her home, the Hale home is also hosting a spiritualist who has offered to connect to a young man who died during the war. The man was Eliza's brother and Saffron's first love. The spiritualist is also angling to be hired by Saffron's mother to connect with Saffron's father who also died in the war. But the spiritualist or her assistant is using drugs to make those who attend the seances more susceptible to suggestion which plays right into Saffron's strengths both as a botanist and a woman who has solved a number of crimes.

The story was exciting and engaging. I like the relationship between Alexander and Saffron and Saffron's ability to stand up for herself.

I received this one in exchange for an honest review from NetGalley. You can buy your copy here.