The Care and Feeding of Waspish Widows by Olivia Waite
Agatha Griffin has been busy keeping her printing business going ever since her husband passed away. Not only does she want to keep the business safely running, but she also wants to see her son finally help run things with her. However, Sydney is busy rubbing elbows with fellow radical thinkers and wooing Agatha’s apprentice. It’s just the icing on the cake when Agatha discovers that there’s a bee colony living in her warehouse. That’s where Penelope Flood, a skilled beekeeper, comes in. Agatha thought she was ready to be done with the bees as soon as possible, but there’s something about Penelope that sucks her in. The feeling is mutual as Penelope finds herself forging a friendship with the lovely widow…
I’ve been a fan of this series, which made me excited to finally read the second installment. This time around, we follow Agatha and Penelope through their rotating perspectives as they slowly fall in love with one another. Both are excellent characters who bring a lot to the table. I found them to be extremely interesting, so it was fun getting to see them slowly fall in love and introduce each other to their respective circles. There’s also an excellent supporting cast that I enjoyed getting to know, and I found myself delighted when some of these characters kept gracing the pages.
The romance itself is a very slow and cute one. The whole opening was fun and I really liked seeing Agatha and Penelope slowly fall in love between their correspondence as well as visits. As Penelope is a skilled beekeeper, it was fun to see bees leave their mark on the story. I’m not knowledgeable about bees, so I can’t tell you if all the information was accurate, but I do know at least some of it was based on what I do know. It was really cute to see bees slowly bring these two characters together and break Agatha out of her shell.
I’m not sure if I would call this a romance novel, though. The romance was not the main plot and it really took a break for what I’m assuming was supposed to be a major side plot. I thought what is actually a major plotline along with the side plots were interesting and well written, but the romance basically flew out the window for a good portion once they all got rolling. It wouldn’t have been so bad if the romance was slowly ramping up during this time, but it seemed to be almost completely forgotten unless you count Agatha wishing that Penelope wasn’t a married woman from time to time.
That said, I really did enjoy the book. It has an excellent cast of characters that I will miss, but there wasn’t a good balance between the main plots and the romance for a good portion of the book. I think that the romance could’ve continued with the cute slow burn during this time if it wasn’t going to ramp up the romance. I will say that once the romance finally starts getting going again, it goes hard. However, I think it missed the mark a bit as a romance novel since that ended up being a side plot.
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