Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the arc of this novel. I'm rating it 3.5* and would recommend it with some caveats.

***Review Summary:***
I was so excited to read this book. Midsomer Murders meets Sherlock Holmes, but with a middle-aged, queer, autistic female protagonist whose special interest is plants: what's not to love?

The book seems best-suited to those looking for a fun, twisty story and who don't mind small inaccuracies or minor plot holes. The tone is often comical, and the book isn't afraid to lean on stereotypes. The ending was a particularly good mixture of entertaining and sweet. Some of the supporting cast of characters were absolutely delightful.

That said, I want to flag that Bella Donna is the third book of a series. With hindsight, I don't think it was the best starting-point for getting to know our protagonist Professor Eustacia Rose.

I haven't read the other two books, and went into this novel thinking that it would be a standalone in the style of Agatha Christie. To a certain extent, it was: the plot was still easy to understand. However, I struggled to connect with the characters, especially since the backstory of their relationships wasn't ever explained, and there were some references to how past cases interact with this book's case that I'm still confused about.

Although I'm rating this book 3.5*, I will keep my eye out for the first in the series (Devil's Breath) because I think I'd really enjoy a proper introduction to the professor.

***Detailed Review:***
On paper, this book has everything you could want. A light-hearted, twisty, gore-free murder-mystery plot in fun locations with unique characters and interesting plant facts. (I think the protagonist's habit of giving every character a plant nickname may be my favourite thing about this book.)

But as I mentioned in my review summary, these characters have a history that's not always shown.

As I began reading, it became clear that the protagonist and her girlfriend are going through a rough patch. But because I hadn't seen their relationship when things were good, I just kept thinking that they were a terrible couple. One can't stop lying to the other; the other completely disrespects the things that are important to her partner. Perhaps if I'd read the first two books and seen what brought them together, I'd have desperately wanted them to resolve their issues. Instead, I just kept thinking that they should break up.

Similarly, for much of the novel, I struggled to connect with the protagonist Professor Eustacia Rose — despite the many things we have in common as autistic, queer nerds. On top of being a terrible partner, she spends a large part of the book being selfish and severely lacking in empathy. For example, when a man tells Eustacia that he can't risk his life to find her plants because he has a wife and child to look after, Eustacia tells him that he should risk his life because her plants are as important as his child. And while I don't need my characters to be 100% likeable, I do like to see some redeeming qualities in the first half of the book. Unfortunately, I didn't really get that until the end of the novel.

I guess some people might say that Eustacia's lack of empathy is because she's autistic. And I recognise that autism can present very differently from one person to another — that's why we say it's a spectrum. But the stereotype that autistic people lack empathy has been categorically shown to be untrue. Although autistic people can struggle with intuitively understanding people's emotions (e.g. understanding how someone feels based on their facial expression and automatically knowing how to react), we've also been shown to be great at cognitive empathy (based on the context, I think this person probably feels...). So it's not because of Eustacia's autism.

Eustacia's lack of cognitive empathy doesn't just make her say hurtful things. It also gets in the way as she tries to do things that will a) obviously backfire and b) the people around her are telling her will obviously backfire and explaining why. It got a little tiring, if I'm honest. Again, there are a lot of different ways that autism can present, but I've yet to meet an autistic person who isn't acutely aware that neurotypical people understand other neurotypical people better than we do.

However, Eustacia does demonstrate more empathy as the novel goes on, and I found myself growing fond of her towards the end. Also, in the second half of the novel, it became clear that she has some recent (?) trauma (on top of a lot of very old trauma) that could perhaps explain her poor handling of situations (but it's not explained what nearly any of this trauma is, so I guess it all came up in previous books). I think I might have liked her a lot better from the start had I read the previous two books.

I also mentioned minor inaccuracies and small plot holes. I think this is the type of thing that some readers won't care about, others will chuckle over, and others will be driven crazy by. It just comes down to what you look for in your books. Here's an example so you can decide how much it might bother you: one Brazilian character had the name Carlos Santos, which is like calling a British character James Smith, but the plot hinges on seemingly unrelated Portuguese characters instantly recognising the name. (Also, the author doesn't seem to be great with Brazilian names in general, with married couples sharing one single surname despite that normally meaning a sibling relationship!)