Genre: cozy mystery

#BookReview: Bayou Book Thief by Ellen Byron

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews
#BookReview: Bayou Book Thief by Ellen ByronBayou Book Thief (Vintage Cookbook Mystery, #1) by Ellen Byron
Format: ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: cozy mystery, culinary mystery, mystery
Series: Vintage Cookbook Mystery #1
Pages: 304
Published by Berkley on June 7, 2022
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

A fantastic new cozy mystery series with a vintage flair from USA Today bestselling and Agatha Award-winning author Ellen Byron.
Twenty-eight-year-old widow Ricki James leaves Los Angeles to start a new life in New Orleans after her showboating actor husband perishes doing a stupid internet stunt. The Big Easy is where she was born and adopted by the NICU nurse who cared for her after Ricki's teen mother disappeared from the hospital.
Ricki's dream comes true when she joins the quirky staff of Bon Vee Culinary House Museum, the spectacular former Garden District home of late bon vivant Genevieve "Vee" Charbonnet, the city's legendary restauranteur. Ricki is excited about turning her avocation - collecting vintage cookbooks - into a vocation by launching the museum's gift shop, Miss Vee's Vintage Cookbooks and Kitchenware. Then she discovers that a box of donated vintage cookbooks contains the body of a cantankerous Bon Vee employee who was fired after being exposed as a book thief.
The skills Ricky has developed ferreting out hidden vintage treasures come in handy for investigations. But both her business and Bon Vee could wind up as deadstock when Ricki's past as curator of a billionaire's first edition collection comes back to haunt her.
Will Miss Vee's Vintage Cookbooks and Kitchenware be a success ... or a recipe for disaster?

My Review:

There is just something about New Orleans, and there probably always has been. There certainly always has been for me, as I’ve been drawn to reading books set in that city ever since my very first visit decades ago. So, when a friend picked up this book and said it looked like fun, I was more than willing to come along for the virtual trip.

Ricki James isn’t so much visiting as returning home to New Orleans after a long absence when this story begins. Her move may be a return to her roots after years in Los Angeles, but it also represents a fresh start – or at least Ricki certainly hopes so. She has come home in an attempt to dodge not one but two scandals she hopes she left behind in LA.

Just as no good deed goes unpunished, no really big scandal ever truly gets left behind – particularly not when there’s still some juice left in it. A situation with which Ricki becomes all too aware when a new and equally juicy scandal arrives at her door.

Not, initially, her personal door, but definitely, more importantly and absolutely worse, the door of her new and just barely established antique cookery, bookstore and museum gift shop at the equally newly established Bon Vee Culinary House Museum in the Garden District home of the late and much lamented Genevieve “Vee” Charbonnet, one of the city’s legendary restaurateurs.

One of the museum’s docents, a man nearly everyone on the staff can barely stand – at best – is caught red-handed with a selection of her shop’s vintage cookbooks concealed under his coat. It’s theft, pure and simple – no matter how much he tries to pin the blame that is so obviously his on practically every other person on the scene. His attempt to shift the blame merely spreads the ill-will he has always engendered – and avails him absolutely not.

But it might be the cause of his murder that night. A murder that casts a shadow over the Museum AND Ricki’s shop, as the theft, the spurious accusations the man threw around, AND the general enmity that nearly everyone seems to have felt for him, points out a possible motive. A motive that, as thin as it might seem, seems to be the only one the police can find.

The question, a question that seems to generally hover around the NOPD according to these local residents, is whether the police are willing and/or able to look all that hard when there’s an easy solution clearly to hand.

And that’s what leads antique cookbook expert Ricki James onto the path that many a worried amateur sleuth has trod before her. She decides to investigate the murder herself. Just to see if she can find a clue – or ten – that the police might have missed. In the hopes of preserving a wonderful place full of terrific people who are doing good work and might just offer her a chance to make a new place for herself into the bargain.

Escape Rating B: Bayou Book Thief was simply a delicious starter for a cozy mystery series. There was plenty of atmosphere – well of course because New Orleans – along with tempting red herrings, a fascinating ‘home base’ filled with interesting and quirky characters AND a whole series of villains that were easy to hate.

Beginning with that first murder victim, as it seems like no one misses the man. He was a nuisance when he was alive – and an even bigger one now that he’s dead. Leaving behind oodles of potential suspects and plenty of motives.

What made the story extra, added fun and filled with even more surprises was that the motive was wrapped around a decades old secret in a way that added to all the charm – and warmed the cockles of this booklover’s heart.

Writing randy romances – actually soft core porn – in the 1950s (around the time that the infamous Peyton Place was first published) was just not the done thing for young blue-blooded women possessing New Orleans’ finest pedigrees. Over half a century later, the now 80something Madame Lucretia Noisette is delighted that her old pseudonym has been rediscovered and she’s more than willing to own it.

The world has changed in the intervening decades, and at her age she’s past caring about any possible remaining potential scandal – even if her son and her grandchildren are not.

Little do they know that it’s not grand-mère’s once upon a time scandal that will cause the most problems. It’s not even Ricki’s much more recent scandals – the ones that she hoped she had left behind in LA. (That she had one serious scandal in her past is not atypical for the amateur detective in a cozy series. Two, however, struck this reader as a bit over-the-top, as both scandals were extremely juicy to the point where having one person be involved in both felt a bit like ‘overegging the pudding’. I’m curious to see the effects they’ll have on Ricki in future books in the series.)

Where back in the day the investigative axiom “cherchez la femme” might have led to the real villain, in this later day “follow the money” is a much better bet. Even if Ricki doesn’t figure out the whole thing at the very last moment.

She’s still ahead of the NOPD, something that is likely to spur her to future investigations. As it already has, considering that there are at least two more books in this charming cozy mystery series, Wined and Died in New Orleans and French Quarter Fright Night. I’m certainly planning on a return visit the next time I feel like ‘laissez les bon temps rouler’ the way to murder.

A+ #BookReview: The Teller of Small Fortunes by Julie Leong

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A+ Reviews> book reviews
A+ #BookReview: The Teller of Small Fortunes by Julie LeongThe Teller of Small Fortunes by Julie Leong
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, large print, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: cozy fantasy, cozy mystery, fantasy
Pages: 336
Published by Ace on November 5, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

A wandering fortune teller finds an unexpected family in this warm and wonderful debut fantasy, perfect for readers of Travis Baldree and Sangu Mandanna.
Tao is an immigrant fortune teller, traveling between villages with just her trusty mule for company. She only tells "small" fortunes: whether it will hail next week; which boy the barmaid will kiss; when the cow will calve. She knows from bitter experience that big fortunes come with big consequences…
Even if it’s a lonely life, it’s better than the one she left behind. But a small fortune unexpectedly becomes something more when a (semi) reformed thief and an ex-mercenary recruit her into their desperate search for a lost child. Soon, they’re joined by a baker with a knead for adventure, and—of course—a slightly magical cat.
Tao sets down a new path with companions as big-hearted as her fortunes are small. But as she lowers her walls, the shadows of her past are closing in—and she’ll have to decide whether to risk everything to preserve the family she never thought she could have.

My Review:

Tao tells small fortunes. Only small fortunes. Just as it takes a big risk to win a big reward, it takes big magic to tell big fortunes. Which also results in big risks that Tao is simply not willing to, well, risk.

The only big fortune Tao ever told resulted in a big disaster. Her father was killed, her village was destroyed, her mother married a foreigner, took Tao away from home and raised her among strangers who could never get past her origins. And who seemingly could never forgive the girl for the turn in the family’s, well, fortunes.

So Tao took to the road, with her small cart and her small fortunes, doing her best to make enough money to keep body and soul together and on the road, touring small towns, never touching the greater magics that would foretell death and disaster and bring the empire’s witchfinders down upon her bowed head.

The rounds of Tao’s quiet and unassuming life are disrupted when she tells what she believes is a small fortune for a traveling mercenary. She sees him greet his little girl in front of what appears to be their home. A simple, everyday sort of fortune.

But the little girl has been missing for months and months, and her father and his friend – a semi-reformed thief – have themselves taken to the roads in search of the little girl’s whereabouts – or at least her fate.

This seemingly small fortune is huge. It is life-altering. Finding his little girl safe and sound will change everything for the mercenary – and he is determined to stick with Tao until that vision becomes truth.

The linking of his quest to her vision is the seed of change. As her vision leads him from clue to clue and village to village, their little band turns into a found family – a family that in turn is found by a series of small fortunes with big implications as the wheels of her cart grind their way to the fortune that Tao has been avoiding for all of her journeying.

It takes her home – to the home she never thought she could go back to – and to the one she never imagined she’d ever be able to make even for herself.

Escape Rating A+: This OMG DEBUT novel is just marvelous. I went into it expecting something light and cozy and certainly got that, but it’s just such a terrific story that hits so many excellent notes and is deeper than I was expecting by a whole lot.

It’s like every time the story takes just a bit of a twist it also digs more deeply into the heart – both Tao’s and the reader’s at the same time.

A big part of the story, and certainly the form of it, is the journey. Tao is traveling, endlessly traveling, because she’s rootless. She has no place that calls her home. So a big part of her starting out is an immigrant’s journey. Her mother brought her out of their country of Shinn to the country of their rival, Eshtera. Tao is never accepted as Eshteran because of her Shinian (read Asian) appearance, but she and her mother drifted apart so she doesn’t remember the culture of her origins. She’s lost without a true place of her own.

Her Esteran stepfather tried to forcibly graft her into Eshtera through marriage, but that was doomed to fail – so she fled. Her magic marks her as dangerous but the power of it is coveted – so she hides from the Empire.

She’s alone and feels doomed to remain so.

Her journey, that thing that keeps her isolated, is her salvation, and the story becomes Tao picking up a band of ‘strays’ much like herself and becoming the center of a found family – a family that she is willing to step WAY out of her comfort zone to protect, which in turn saves her as well as them.

And as the members of her little tribe each find their way into her heart, they all find their way into the reader’s as well.

A surprising readalike for this book is A Psalm for the Wild Built, which isn’t fantasy at all. But the journeys and the discoveries and the found family aspects are very similar, as is the way that Sibling Dex in Psalm becomes a big part of each of the places she visits even as she makes her own found family with the robot.

More than Legends and Lattes, which seems to be listed as the go-to readalike for every cozy fantasy, The Teller of Small Fortunes reminded me a whole lot more of the Mead Mishaps series. Not the romantic aspects of that series, but rather the way that both stories start out at a very light level and turn out to be important quest journeys with much larger implications and big found family elements by the time they reach their HEAs.

Very much like the other cozy fantasy series(es), however, The Teller of Small Fortunes is a story where there is not a villainous villain in sight. Instead, there are bad things that have happened to good people that get resolved through mostly human agency even as those humans make human mistakes along the way.

This isn’t a BIG story. There’s no big bad and there’s no big battle and it’s not a big contest between good and evil. Instead it’s a gentle story about people finding their way and finding that their way goes better when they go together.

It’s lovely and you’ll turn the last page with a smile and some days those are just the kind of stories we all need. When it’s your turn to need one of those kinds of stories, pick up this book. I’ll be eagerly awaiting her next.

A- #BookReview: Murder in Highbury by Vanessa Kelly

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> blog tours> book reviews
A- #BookReview: Murder in Highbury by Vanessa KellyMurder in Highbury by Vanessa Kelly
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: cozy mystery, historical mystery, regency mystery
Series: Emma Knightley Mystery #1
Pages: 400
Published by Kensington on October 22, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

The delightful debut of a Regency historical mystery featuring Jane Austen’s indefatigable Emma Knightley! Perfect for fans of Anna Lee Huber, Darcie Wilde, Claudia Gray, and Stephanie Barron. Less than one year into her marriage to respected magistrate George Knightley, Emma has grown unusually content in her newfound partnership and refreshed sense of independence. The height of summer sees the former Miss Woodhouse gracefully balancing the meticulous management of her elegant family estate and a flurry of social engagements, with few worries apart from her beloved father’s health . . .    But cheery circumstances change in an instant when Emma and Harriet Martin, now the wife of one of Mr. Knightley’s tenant farmers, discover a hideous shock at the local church. The corpse of Mrs. Augusta Elton, the vicar’s wife, has been discarded on the altar steps—the ornate necklace she often wore stripped from her neck . . .    As a chilling murder mystery blooms and chaos descends upon the tranquil village of Highbury, the question isn’t simply who committed the crime, but who wasn’t secretly wishing for the unpleasant woman’s demise. When suspicions suddenly fall on a harmless local, Emma—armed with wit, unwavering determination, and extensive social connections—realizes she must discreetly navigate an investigation of her own to protect the innocent and expose the ruthless culprit hiding in plain sight.

My Review:

Mrs. Elton was dead, to begin with. And the only person in Highbury who seems to miss her is the local vicar. Then again, that local vicar was her husband, so he’s supposed to miss her. even if the woman had earned the, let’s call it the disregard, of everyone else in town – one way or another.

Honestly, several ways and many others. Mrs. Augusta Elton believed that everyone in Highbury was beneath her, and wasn’t at all shy – in any way – about making that plain.

When her body is discovered on the floor of her husband’s church, with finger-shaped bruises around her neck, blood and brain matter matted in her hair but without the expensive necklace she habitually wore, it’s clear to even the dullest numpty that Mrs. Elton was murdered. Also robbed, but definitely murdered.

The problem in Highbury is that there hasn’t been a murder in decades – and the local coroner and constable ARE both a couple of utter numpties at best, and pompous, self-aggrandizing fools at worst.

However, the corpse of the late, unlamented was discovered by Mrs. Knightley – the former Miss Emma Woodhouse – and her friend Mrs. Martin, the former Miss Harriet Smith. And, while Harriet can be a bit of a widgeon when she’s upset – and discovering a dead body is certainly VERY upsetting – Emma is much too intelligent and level-headed to let the terrible sight in front of her prevent her from investigating the scene of the unprecedented crime.

And Emma Knightley, née Woodhouse, has never, ever been a dullard or a widgeon or a numpty. So, when most of the officials involved in investigating the case – with the obvious exception of Emma’s dear husband, who was, after all, smart enough to marry her in spite of her errors in matchmaking in the Jane Austen book named after her – accuse an oh-so-obviously incorrect person of the murder, Emma is all in on investigating the crime herself.

With, or without, her husband’s approval. But generally – and thankfully for Emma’s wake – with. Allowing Emma to prove, yet again, that there are times when she can be just a bit TOO smart for someone’s own good. And very nearly, her own.

Escape Rating A-: I was honestly surprised at how very much I enjoyed Murder in Highbury. But enjoy it I certainly did, and kept coming back to it over the course of a lazy Sunday because I just couldn’t resist seeing both whodunnit and how Emma managed to investigate the case in spite of a lack of even any of Sherlock Holmes’ forensic methods.

Part of my trepidation was due to not being an Austenphile. I’m pretty sure I listened to Emma once upon a time, but that would have been 30 years ago. I don’t remember any of the details – but that did not affect my enjoyment of this story one bit. (If you never read Emma, or read it LONG ago and don’t remember those details either, I would recommend looking at a plot summary. The events are still relevant, and the players are the same, so some background is helpful but not required.)

The second part of my concern going into the story reflects back on yesterday’s book (and Friday’s a bit, come to think of it), in regards to the difficulty that frequently occurs in female-led historical fiction. Specifically that the protagonist needs to be a woman of her own time and not ours, but must manage to realistically have enough agency to BE the protagonist. Emma manages to walk that line differently from Mabel Canning of the London Ladies’ Murder Club a century later, but manage it she does.

It helps that Emma was known to be high-handed, headstrong and intelligent if often prone to rushing down the wrong path, and she’s still that a year later in this story. Howsomever, while she is not independent in the way that Mabel is, she is allowed to act according to her own nature by the men who do have actual power over her – so she frequently acts first and worries about questions of forgiveness vs. permission later if at all – even as she still sometimes lets her heart overrule her head.

Because we’re in Emma’s head, we get to experience both what is said and done on the outside, as well as her actual, and frequently much less socially acceptable, thoughts on the inside. The men in charge absolutely ARE idiots, and we get to cringe right along with her.

Above all, and in spite of the murder, or on top of it, underneath it and all around it, Murder in Highbury is still just the kind of ‘comedy of manners’ that infused Jane Austen’s work and has made it utterly timeless. Human nature hasn’t changed in a mere two centuries, and the exposure and gentle ribbing of the nature of people in Highbury rings true in spite of the murderer and his (or her!) victim in their midst.

Or perhaps even more so because of it. Making Murder in Highbury a surprisingly charming and utterly delightful read. It looks like Murder in Highbury is the first in a cozy historical mystery series.  I hope so, because I’d be delighted to return to Highbury to watch Emma investigate another case!

A- #BookReview: Murder of a Suffragette by Marty Wingate

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
A- #BookReview: Murder of a Suffragette by Marty WingateMurder of a Suffragette (London Ladies' Murder Club #4) by Marty Wingate
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: cozy mystery, historical mystery
Series: London Ladies' Murder Club #4
Pages: 331
Published by Bookouture on October 28, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble
Goodreads

Women from all around the country have joined together to fight for the vote. But when one of them is killed, only amateur sleuth Mabel Canning can halt a murderer’s campaign…Fellbridge Hall, England: Mabel Canning is thrilled to be organising a suffragette conference. But when all the women are settled in the sprawling country mansion, she barely has time for a sip of gin before chaos ensues. Leading suffragette Annie Harkin has been found murdered in her bed, clutching a white feather in her outstretched hand…As the guests clamour for justice for Annie, young police officers Ned and Ted arrive in time to trip over the banners and be roundly ignored. And with a killer on the loose, the suffragettes swiftly vote for Mabel and her pals to take control. When it comes to solving mysteries, there’s nobody equal to the London Ladies’ Murder Club!But soon it’s clear many a suffragette is hiding a secret under her sash. Eccentric veteran of the cause Dorothea Goose is acting rather flighty; why is she so afraid of the police? Would Annie’s rival go this far to replace her as leader? Or has someone taken a life to stop the cause of women’s lib?Then Mabel uncovers what happened to Annie’s closest comrade in the years before the war, and she is sure the answers lie in the past. But will Mabel be elected as the killer’s next victim? Or can she crack the case and save the fight for Votes for Women?A totally addictive whodunnit bursting with suspense and sparkling with wit, from USA Today bestseller Marty Wingate. Perfect for fans of Agatha Christie, Richard Osman, Verity Bright and T.E. Kinsey.

My Review:

As much as it makes Mabel Canning’s father worry about her when she’s on her own in London, it’s clear from this fourth entry in the utterly charming London Ladies’ Murder Club that her home, the tiny village of Peasmarsh and its surrounds, are better off if Mabel is in London.

Not because of Mabel herself, but rather because she seems to have a fortunately unfortunate knack for finding herself in the midst of murder investigations. Peasmarsh’s population is much too small to survive the number of deaths that Mabel and her ‘club’ become involved with on the regular!

As this case is a, well, case in point. Mabel has returned to the Peasmarsh area to serve as the personal secretary to Lady Emma Fellbridge at nearby Fellbridge Hall. Lady Emma has known Mabel all of Mabel’s life, and Mabel was a frequent guest at the hall as her dearest childhood friend was Lady Emma’s daughter-in-law until the Spanish Flu took her much too soon.

Lady Emma was one of the heroines of the suffragette movement, and has convened a meeting of her fellow campaigners at Fellbridge Hall to consider the next phase of their work. At the time this story takes place, 1922, women 30 years of age and over who were property owners or householders, or married to men who were either of the above, or occupiers of rental property over a certain rate, or university graduates had the right to vote, while men could vote from age 21 with considerably fewer restrictions. These women, who once chained themselves to gates and went on hunger strikes in prison, are determined to continue the fight for equality into a new generation.

Mabel and her ‘Murder Club’ have arrived at Fellbridge Hall under the auspices of Miss Kerr’s Useful Women’s Agency for which Mabel works and of which her ‘Murder Club’ is an active part. She’s not expecting for the club to be active at the suffragette meeting – but that’s exactly what happens when one of the suffragettes, in fact, one of the women in contention to become the next leader of the movement, is murdered.

Mabel has more experience with murder investigations than the local police do – and Detective Inspector Tollerton of the Met is just far enough away in London and snowed under with urgent cases in the metropolis to leave Mabel temporarily in charge. Somewhat to his own surprise – and even occasional chagrin – Tolly is forced to leave Mabel leading the investigation, seconded by WPC Hildy Wardle, several members of her Murder Club, and two local constables who desperately need someone to give them orders.

When a second suffragette is murdered, and Mabel herself is attacked twice, she’s certain that she’s on the trail of a murderer – but the clues are misleading at best and confoundingly conflicting at worst. She’ll need the wits, and the skills, of every single member of the London Ladies’ Murder Club to catch the killer – before he strikes again.

Escape Rating A-: I’ve been looking forward to reading this latest entry in the London Ladies’ Murder Club since the minute I finished the previous book, A Body at the Dance Hall. And it absolutely was worth the wait! My one regret about having finished this book is that I don’t know for certain that there will be a next book in the series – or when that MUCH hoped for book will be published. (I have my fingers crossed!)

I’ve fallen for this series because I’ve taken to Mabel Canning as the protagonist. The charm of the series rides very much on her shoulders – and it’s just terrific to follow the investigation from inside her thoughtful, intelligent head.

What makes this series work for me is that Mabel does an excellent job of straddling the line between being a woman of her own time and not ours, while still having a realistic amount of agency to go about her business – which in Mabel’s case is investigating murders.

She does have to reckon with the attitudes towards women’s roles and women’s place, but because of her particular era, just post-World War I, she’s part of a time when things were still in flux because of the war – and because the war killed a generation of young men leaving many women without the prospects of marriage even if they wanted it.

The series does not shy away from the fact that some didn’t, including Mabel’s friends Skeff and Cora, as well as, it turns out, both Lady Emma and the first victim, Annie, even though the earlier generation did follow tradition – at least to all outward appearances. And it’s the degree to which lip service was given to those outward appearances that creates one of the sets of misunderstood clues and red herrings that makes this particular case so juicy.

Another part of the series that works particularly well is the way that it dives into women’s experiences and women’s history. In this particular case, the suffragette movement, its sister movement, the suffragists, and the contention between the two. Suffragettes were the considerably more militant arm of the movement – while suffragists preferred to conduct their campaign via entirely legal means. There existed tension between the two as well as an acknowledgement that some women switched from one to the other (and back and again) over time.

Voting rights for women on the same terms as men was finally granted in 1928, but at the time of this story the fight was not yet won. The question before the gathered women centered on just who would be the best person to lead that fight. The strong personalities of many of the women involved made leadership of the movement a possible motive that Mabel was forced to consider – no matter how much she wished it was not.

Part of what makes Mabel such a fascinating protagonist is the way that she navigates her world, and the push and pull of loving her father and wanting to remain in his good graces – he’s a good man and has been an excellent father – but still NEEDS to live her own life on her own terms gave this entry in the series a very personal touch as well.

Her father wants her to be safe – but he recognizes that safe on his terms is not what his daughter was built for. It was wonderful to see a supportive father-daughter relationship in a female-led historical mystery – as opposed to the more usual situation, where dear-old-dad has often been the impetus for his daughter’s flight from conventionality in one way or another. If not several.

In other words, there are a LOT of reasons why I enjoy the London Ladies’ Murder Club series and this entry is certainly an excellent example of why. I did figure out WHOdunnit a bit early, although the WHYdunnit took a bit longer. I’m here for Mabel Canning, and I hope you will be too. If you haven’t discovered her yet, start with A Body on the Doorstep to see just how the London Ladies’ Murder Club got its start!

A+ #BookReview: The Crescent Moon Tearoom by Stacy Sivinski

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A+ Reviews> book reviews
A+ #BookReview: The Crescent Moon Tearoom by Stacy SivinskiThe Crescent Moon Tearoom by Stacy Sivinski
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, large print, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: cozy fantasy, cozy mystery, historical romance, historical fantasy
Pages: 336
Published by Atria Books on October 1, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

A cozy and uplifting debut novel about three clairvoyant sisters who face an unexpected twist of Fate at the bottom of their own delicate porcelain cups.
Ever since the untimely death of their parents, Anne, Beatrix, and Violet Quigley have made a business of threading together the stories that rest in the swirls of ginger, cloves, and cardamom at the bottom of their customers’ cups. Their days at the teashop are filled with talk of butterflies and good fortune intertwined with the sound of cinnamon shortbread being snapped by laced fingers.
That is, until the Council of Witches comes calling with news that the city Diviner has lost her powers, and the sisters suddenly find themselves being pulled in different directions. As Anne’s magic begins to develop beyond that of her sisters’, Beatrix’s writing attracts the attention of a publisher, and Violet is enchanted by the song of the circus—and perhaps a mischievous trapeze artist threatening to sweep her off her feet. It seems a family curse that threatens to separate the sisters is taking effect.
With dwindling time to rewrite their future and help three other witches challenge their own destinies, the Quigleys set out to bargain with Fate. But in focusing so closely on saving each other, will they lose sight of themselves?

My Review:

The Crescent Room Tearoom serves well-to-do ladies with considerably more than just tea from its turn-of-the-20th century location on Chicago’s bustling State Street, already the home of Marshall Field’s and Schlesinger & Mayer.

The Quigley sisters, Anne, Beatrice and Violet, serve slices of the future along with tea, pastries and finger sandwiches. They are witches, and they are all gifted with the ability to tell the future – just like their mother before them.

Like much of Chicago’s magical community, the Quigley sisters hide in plain sight, operating their tearoom just outside the edge of the city’s burgeoning magical district, dispensing true fortunes and sage advice under the guise of gossip, amusement and ladies’ fripperies.

Of course the magical community knows the truth about the Quigley sisters, the triplet daughters of the most gifted seer the Chicago Coven had seen in generations. A woman who gave up her place in the Coven to marry her mundane soulmate, knowing that their lives would end in tragedy.

Because her gift of seeing the future could also be a curse.

A curse that seems to have passed to the sisters now that they have grown up. Their joint operation of the tearoom has given them safety, security and companionship. At least until they discover that they are cursed to lose it all – and that it seems as if the leaders of the Chicago Coven are complicit in that curse.

Just as the curse drives a wedge in their contented companionship, setting them each on paths that pull them away from the shop and from each other, the Coven sets them three seemingly impossible tasks that must be met by an even more impossible deadline – or they will destroy the shop and cast the sisters out of the community.

It’s obviously a plot. If the curse doesn’t get them, the Coven will – and vice versa. Unless, like their parents loving but much too brief happiness, the curse is not really a curse after all.

Escape Rating A+: It’s the way that the whole, entire story does a complete heel turn that makes it work – because the story isn’t AT ALL what the reader thinks it’s going to be at the beginning.

First, I loved the setting. Chicago is still one of my favorite cities, and it’s always seemed magical to me. Part of the reason I loved the Dresden Files series so much – back in that day – was that Harry’s Chicago was ‘my’ Chicago, just with more magic. It’s also a part of what made Veronica Roth’s recent When Among Crows work so well, because it seemed just so downright likely that there’s a magical community hiding in plain sight.

Which is the case in The Crescent Moon Tearoom. This is definitely turn-of-the-last century Chicago, when State Street was already ‘that great street’. The gigantic downtown department stores were still new and celebrated and it was fun to read about Marshall Field’s back in that day, because the building is still something special a century plus later. (I had to look Schlesinger and Mayer up because the store didn’t last but the building did – as Carson, Pirie, Scott.)

Returning to the story – because it’s a wonderful story to return to – what I loved about The Crescent Moon Tearoom was the way that the reader is led down a primrose path, multiple times, making the reveal at the end just that much cozier and more heartwarming.

Because I have to admit that as the story was going along, I wasn’t all that sure about the cozy fantasy label. At first, it reminded me a LOT of Small Town, Big Magic, in that the heroine is cursed, her powers are gone, and the local coven leadership is manipulative to the max and evil to the core. And that’s at the point where the reader thinks the purpose of the story is to reveal the coven’s machinations and thwart their plot.

That it turns out to be entirely different – and much better, more heartwarming and considerably more interesting into the bargain – was the ending I stayed up until 4 in the morning for – and I’m so very glad that I did.

The Crescent Moon Tearoom is the author’s DEBUT novel, and it’s simply fantastic in all of the meanings of that word. The one and only, teeny-tiny, even slightly negative thing I could possibly say about it is that this book does not read like the first in a series. I could be wrong. I’d LOVE to be wrong. But even if I’m right about this book, I will absolutely be on the lookout for her next!

A- #BookReview: The Village Library Demon Hunting Society by C.M. Waggoner

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
A- #BookReview: The Village Library Demon Hunting Society by C.M. WaggonerThe Village Library Demon-Hunting Society by C.M. Waggoner
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: cozy fantasy, cozy mystery, paranormal
Pages: 339
Published by Ace on September 24, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

A librarian with a knack for solving murders realizes there is something decidedly supernatural afoot in her little town in this cozy fantasy mystery.
Librarian Sherry Pinkwhistle keeps finding bodies—and solving murders. But she's concerned by just how many killers she's had to track down in her quaint village. None of her neighbors seem surprised by the rising body count...but Sherry is becoming convinced that whatever has been causing these deaths is unnatural. But when someone close to Sherry ends up dead, and her cat, Lord Thomas Crowell, becomes possessed by what seems to be an ancient demon, Sherry begins to think she’s going to need to become an exorcist as well as an amateur sleuth. With the help of her town's new priest, and an assortment of friends who dub themselves the "Demon-Hunting Society," Sherry will have to solve the murder and get rid of a demon. This riotous mix of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Murder, She Wrote is a lesson for demons and murderers.
Never mess with a librarian.

My Review:

Teeny, tiny Winesap, New York might just be the murder capital of the whole, entire world, and from a certain perspective it’s all Librarian Sherry Pinkwhistle’s fault. And she wouldn’t have it any other way.

That sounds terrible, doesn’t it?

Which is exactly what Sherry realizes when the latest victim of the town’s absolutely-not-a-serial-killer crime spree is the gentleman she’s been seeing for several months now. (Sherry, as a woman of a certain age, has a difficult time thinking of him as her ‘boyfriend’ because that just sounds ridiculous – but it is the truth all the same.)

But Alan Thompson’s murder is the first death that has touched her personally, and it shakes her out of her waking daydream of being Winesap’s equivalent of Jessica Fletcher, assisting the police with their investigations no matter how much it embarrasses them.

After all, just like Jessica, Sherry is good at it, and the local police clearly need her help. Just as much as Sherry needs to feel useful and needed and smart and at the center of everything – something that she’s otherwise never been in her whole, entire life.

Alan’s death shakes Sherry and rattles her self-absorbed, contented little bubble. She doesn’t feel any compulsion to investigate Alan’s death – she just wants to grieve for the man who might have been the love of her life. If she’d let him.

Which is the point where the story switches from Murder, She Wrote to Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Not that there are any actual vampires around Winesap in need of slaying. But the town might be sitting on a Hellmouth all the same.

Because suddenly there are demons – or at least A demon – possessing random townspeople who all berate Sherry, at increasing volume and at all hours of the day and night, to stop crying over Alan and put on her big girl panties and investigate his murder – whether she wants to or not.

As far as all of those possessed townspeople are concerned – or at least as far as the demon possessing them is concerned – investigating murders is Sherry’s purpose in Winesap and she needs to get right to it.

So she asks herself, “What Would Buffy Do?” (not exactly but close enough) and puts together her very own Scooby Gang to figure out what’s really going on in Winesap and what she needs to do to set it right.

Even if it involves closing a Hellmouth. Or her own.

Escape Rating A-: Were you teased by that blurb description of Buffy the Vampire Slayer meets Murder, She Wrote?

I absolutely was, because that’s not exactly a combo that anyone would expect to see, pretty much ever. They absolutely are two great tastes – but whether they’d be great together is definitely an open question.

It turns out that it is, but not in the manner that you might expect. Just like it certainly is a cozy fantasy mystery, but likewise, not in the way that blurb might lead a reader to expect. And I definitely have quibbles about the description of it being “riotous” because that’s not true at all.

More like darkly snarky and filled with a lot of wry ruefulness – along with a bit of righteous fear and a whole heaping helping of pulling back the corners of a surprising amount of self-deception.

I think that the blurb description should be reversed, because at the opening it’s very much Murder, She Wrote, to the point where Sherry acknowledges that she often feels like she’s playing the part of Jessica Fletcher in a story for someone else’s entertainment, just as Angela Lansbury played Fletcher in the TV series.

What makes the story work AND descend into the creeping darkness of Buffy is that Sherry discovers that feeling is the literal truth. Winesap is a stage set where murder plays are acted out in order to entertain and amuse an epically bored demon.

Because immortality is both lonely AND boring, and this particular demon, like so many humans, has discovered the joys of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, particularly the stories of Agatha Christie, and is having a grand time watching Sherry and her fellow villagers play out ALL the parts for her.

Particularly as the demon doesn’t actually know how it will end. She claims she’s not forcing anyone to do anything – the increasing frequency and volume of her importuning of Sherry notwithstanding. The demon claims she’s only making suggestions and providing opportunities, that all of the murderers Sherry has ‘caught’ have acted of their own free will.

As has Sherry in her zeal for investigation.

All of which, if true – and it might not be, after all demons lie every bit as much as humans if not a bit more – makes the story a whole lot darker than it first seemed. And opens up the possibility of a sequel – which has the possibility of being even more fascinating as Sherry would have to enter into the thing with full self-awareness.

Along with the awareness that her cat, Lord Thomas Cromwell (the blurb infuriatingly misspells his name – and it MATTERS) really does contain the spirit of the actual historical figure, Lord Thomas Cromwell, the architect of Henry VIII’s infamous divorce, and that her cat is not only watching and judging her – as they all do – but has the ability to tell her all about herself whenever he damn well pleases. Or whenever the demon lets him. Pretty much the same thing.

I hope we’ll get to see them both again.

A- #BookReview: The Restaurant of Lost Recipes by Hisashi Kashiwai, translated by Jesse Kirkwood

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
A- #BookReview: The Restaurant of Lost Recipes by Hisashi Kashiwai, translated by Jesse KirkwoodThe Restaurant of Lost Recipes (Kamogawa Food Detectives, #2) by Hisashi Kashiwai, Jesse Kirkwood
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: cozy mystery, foodie fiction, literary fiction, magical realism, translated fiction, world literature
Series: Kamogawa Food Detectives #2
Pages: 224
Published by G.P. Putnam's Sons on October 8, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

The Restaurant of Lost Recipes is the second book in the bestselling, mouth-watering Kamogawa Food Detectives series, for fans of Before the Coffee Gets Cold.
We all hold lost recipes in our hearts. A very special restaurant in Kyoto helps recreate them...
Chef Nagare and his daughter Koishi serve their customers more than delicious food at their Kamogawa Diner down a quiet street in Kyoto. They can help recreate meals from their customers’ most treasured memories. Through ingenious investigations, these “food detectives” untangle flavors and pore through old shopping lists to remake unique dishes from the past.
From the swimmer who misses his father’s lunchbox to the model who longs for fried rice from her childhood, each customer leaves the diner forever changed—though not always in the ways they expect…
A beloved bestseller in Japan, The Restaurant of Lost Recipes is a tender and healing novel that celebrates the power of community and delicious food.

My Review:

The premise of this series is simple, beautiful and TRUE in all the best ways.

Hunger may be the best sauce, but nostalgia comes a close second. The difference is that hunger makes everything taste better – while nostalgia can only be satisfied by the correct combination of flavors and smells. The one that takes us back to the original that we remember so fondly and are able to reproduce so rarely.

It’s that reproduction – and the memories that come along with it – that makes this series both fascinating and heartwarming.

The Kamogawa Food Detectives are Chef Nagare and his adult daughter Koishi. Their little hole in the wall restaurant in Kyoto is a place that only the locals know. There’s no sign outside and they do almost no advertising. What little advertising they do isn’t even about the restaurant.

Their one line ad in a gourmet magazine proclaims, “We Find Your Food!”, which is exactly what they do. The clients for their food detection service come because they are desperate to recreate a taste – and the feelings that go along with it – that they barely remember but can’t let go of.

That they succeed isn’t magic – but it is. All it takes is a story and a fading memory and a whole lot of detection on the part of Chef Nagare – as well as a whole lot of taste-testing on the part of Koishi – to recreate just what the client has been searching for.

Each case – each story – is just a bit different. The process is the same, but the results are as variable as the clientele. Along the way, linking the separate vignettes into a harmonious whole, is the story of Nagare and Koishi, their banter, their gentle teasing, their excellent father-daughter relationship – and the way they include the missing member of their family, Nagare’s late wife Kikuko – in a way that demonstrates love and care and gentle grief and moving on all at the same time.

There may not be magic in the fantasy or magical realism sense in this book or this series, but the story is absolutely magical all the same.

Escape Rating A-: This is the series that got me firmly hooked on these cozy mystery/fantasy/magical realism type stories (the ones that trace their origin inspiration to Before the Coffee Gets Cold). After devouring this book in one sitting, I’m now certain that this is my favorite of them all in spite of the fact that nearly all of the others, there’s not even a hint of any actual magic.

It still seems like magic, but I think that magic can be put down to two factors – or at least this is how it’s working for me. One factor is the background story, the relationship between Nagare and his adult daughter Koishi and that it does work. Their relationship is just plain good in a way that seems magical because I honestly can’t imagine ever living with my parents as an adult and having them actually treat me as a functional adult. We weren’t that fortunate – although Koishi is.

We don’t get a lot of their daily lives in the spaces between their customers’ stories, but the bits we do get seem to be building on each other in a way that I simply find charming and heartwarming and I hope that other readers do as well.

As much as I enjoy the individual customers’ stories, Nagare and Koishi are the people carrying the story overall, and the other part of what I love is that the ‘magic’ of their food detective business comes down to good interview techniques on Koishi’s part, good investigative skills on Nagare’s part, a willingness to chase down any clue as well as, of course, Nagare’s skill in the kitchen and his willingness to experiment as often as it takes to get the dish exactly right.

The stories wouldn’t be half as much fun if they could just snap their fingers and make it happen. The breathless anticipation on the part of the customer – and the nervous worry on the part of the chef and the detective – make each customer’s story really pay off for both them AND the reader.

I do enjoy the individual stories, but without Nagare and Koishi to tie it all together the books wouldn’t work nearly as well, at least for this reader.

I’ll admit that I’ve been salivating for this book since the minute I finished the first book in the series, The Kamogawa Food Detectives. I mean that both literally and figuratively, as the food described within both stories as well as their presentation is absolutely mouth-watering. So don’t go into this series hungry. I mean it! You have been warned!

IMHO, this was totally worth the wait. I loved it and ate it up in one sitting. I’m just happy that there are several more books in the series in the original Japanese, so I have hopes that more will be translated – preferably as soon as possible!

#BookReview: The Sullivan’s Island Supper Club by Susan M. Boyer

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B- Reviews> book reviews
#BookReview: The Sullivan’s Island Supper Club by Susan M. BoyerThe Sullivan's Island Supper Club: A Carolina Tale by Susan M. Boyer
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, large print, ebook, audiobook
Genres: cozy mystery, relationship fiction, Southern fiction, women's fiction
Series: Carolina Tales #2
Pages: 374
on September 17, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

From the bestselling author of the award-winning novel Big Trouble on Sullivan's Island comes a captivating new tale of friendship, family, and community, and the fissures that threaten to shatter even our closest bonds.

Welcome to Sullivan’s Island, an idyllic beachside town just outside Charleston, South Carolina. This serene, unspoiled sanctuary offers tourists a picturesque taste of the lush Lowcountry while the locals enjoy a laid-back, small-town lifestyle. Amidst an eclectic mix of newcomers and natives, lifelong resident and social maven Tallulah Wentworth’s legendary monthly dinners have united an unlikely group of women into the very best of friends.

To outsiders, this sunny, seaside haven is nothing short of paradise, but the residents of this beachside hamlet know that it harbors its share of troubles. Everyone has an opinion about the most hotly contested local issue—how to manage the maritime forest that’s sprung up on accreted land—and civility is quickly running out at both town council meetings and in online forums.

When a neighborhood meet-and-greet devolves into violence, several pillars of the community are led away in handcuffs. By the next morning, a very real, very dead body is the newest addition to Sarabeth Boone’s spooky Halloween graveyard display. But who could possibly be responsible for such a heinous act?

Did someone finally snap over the mounting tension between conservationists and cutters? Or was this a premeditated act perpetrated by an opportunistic killer masquerading as a trustworthy friend and neighbor?

The Sullivan’s Island Supper Club weaves a tale of mystery, friendship, and love—new love, old love, and second-chance love. Discover the lengths these women will go to protect each other and uncover the truth, even when it shatters the delicate balance of their seemingly perfect lives.

With her uniquely Southern voice, Susan M. Boyer delivers a fast-paced follow-up to the reader-favorite Big Trouble on Sullivan's Island. Perfect for fans of strong Southern women, twisting tales, and the breathtaking Carolina coast, this charming whodunnit mystery marries scandal and sisterhood for the ultimate reading treat.

Be sure to make your reservation at The Sullivan’s Island Supper Club today!

My Review:

In the first book in this very cozy mystery series, Big Trouble on Sullivan’s Island, we met P.I. Hadley Cooper and the group of sisters-from-other-misters from multiple generations who form the core group of Hadley’s friends on Sullivan’s Island – led by the grand doyenne of the group’s beachfront Happy Hour, Eugenia Ladson.

Together, they solved a big mystery and prevented an even bigger miscarriage of justice, even as Eugenia succumbed to the cancer that had done its damndest to blight the final years of her life – but did not succeed even though it took her life.

The Sullivan’s Island Supper Club, one of Eugenia’s many brilliant ideas to “fix” one of her friends – something she was extremely good at – was designed to give her lifelong best friend Tallulah Wentworth something to focus on after the death of her beloved husband, Henry.

The ‘supper club’ isn’t really a supper club in the old tradition. Rather, it’s a monthly dinner, often bartended and occasionally even catered, organized and arranged by Tallulah at her big, built-for-entertaining, Sullivan’s Island home.

It’s a grand idea that worked for Tallulah, and has provided all of the women involved – as well as the men in their lives – with a chance to get together, enjoy each other’s company, catch up with each other – and just generally keep the sisterhood that Eugenia started going strong.

Howsomever, just as the first book in the Carolina Tales series was titled Big Trouble on Sullivan’s Island, this second book could easily have been called “Big Trouble at the Sullivan’s Island Supper Club” – because that’s exactly what it’s about, and not just because there’s more big trouble on Sullivan’s Island itself.

Although there certainly is, as an island-wide civil war is brewing over the accreted land that has been deposited on all the sides of the island that face away from Charleston as a result of work done to maintain the Charleston harbor. A maritime forest has grown up on that “new” land – all of which belongs to the town and not to any of the property owners who bought ocean-front views they no longer have – but it seems are still being taxed for. Many of those owners want the forest clear-cut in spite of the protection it provides from soil erosion. Other owners want to eliminate the rats, snakes and other small burrowing wildlife that thrive in the forests and more than occasionally invade their homes.

And there are conservationists who want the maritime forests preserved, as well as many residents who believe the protection from soil erosion is worth the occasional rat sighting. (You may shudder but still agree – as this reader certainly did).

The island’s general troubles, pitting neighbor against neighbor and bringing former friends to outright blows, is just the terrible icing on the really awful cake of personal troubles that nearly every member of the supper club is experiencing during the months leading up to the big blowup and blowout between the cutters and conservers that takes place on one supper club member’s lawn, leading to the morning discovery of a dead body out front even as another friend is in grave danger – of being placed in one.

Escape Rating B-: I picked this up because I’ve really enjoyed the author’s Liz Talbot mystery series (starting with Lowcountry Boil) and had a good reading time with the first book in her Carolina Tales, Big Trouble on Sullivan’s Island. So I was expecting more of the same, meaning a cozy mystery with a good cast of characters set in a quirky small town with plenty of Southern charm.

Which was almost, but not quite, what I got. I came here looking for the mystery to be the backbone of the story, and that’s not what happens in The Sullivan’s Island Supper Club. There were plenty of little mysteries, definitely plural, but the big mystery, the dead body on the front lawn, wasn’t any bigger of a mystery – except for the corpse, of course – than any of the other many tangled mystery threads on the way to it.

This is a story of sisterhood – and about each of the sisters individually. Often with women’s/relationship fiction, I describe them as stories about friendship in which ‘a romance occurs’ but is not the focus. The Sullivan’s Island Supper Club is a story about friendship in which ‘a romance does occur’ AND ‘a mystery occurs’.

Which was not the emphasis I was looking for. Your reading mileage may vary.

The story this time around is told in first-person, as this author’s stories often are, but in this case it was multiple first persons. For each month – and each supper club meeting – in the months preceding the ‘main event’, we get a chapter from each of the core members of the group, from their individual points of view, focusing on the individual crises in their lives that includes a personal mystery in each case. I found some of their personal trials and tribulations more involving than others – and I expect that will be true for most readers, albeit mixed somewhat differently based on the reader.

As the story went on, it also felt like there was just ‘one too many cooks’ making this particular meal, but they all do tie mostly neatly together at the end. Leaving this reader, at the end, not as sure and/or happy about the thing as I expected. I think that this was the right book at the wrong time for me and probably means I just need to find a more straightforward ‘whodunnit’ this weekend.

Howsomever, the Carolina Tales continue next year in Trouble’s Turn to Lose, with P.I. Hadley Cooper featured again as the protagonist, AND there’s a short story about the beginnings of the Sullivan’s Island Supper Club, titled, appropriately, Beginnings, that’s available now. The next time I’m looking for something a little more relationship fiction-y I’m planning to go back and see how it all began.

A- #BookReview: Summers End by Juneau Black

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
A- #BookReview: Summers End by Juneau BlackSummers End (A Shady Hollow Mystery, #5) by Juneau Black
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: cozy fantasy, cozy mystery
Series: Shady Hollow #5
Pages: 288
Published by Vintage on July 9, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

A unique take on dark academia, featuring everyone's favorite vulpine sleuth, Vera Vixen.

It's late August in Shady Hollow, and the heat has intrepid reporter Vera Vixen eager to get away. She agrees to chaperone the annual field trip to Summers End, an ancient tomb built by an early woodland culture, along with her good friend Lenore Lee to come with her.

But when the two enter the tomb, they find bones that are distinctly more...modern. Digging a little deeper, Vera and Lenore discover that the deceased was involved in a recent excavation at the site, and very unpopular with their colleagues. Now the fox and raven have to delve into the dark world of academia and archaeology to determine which creature thought they were clever enough to get away with the perfect murder.

My Review:

Shady Hollow is just the kind of small town that makes small-town cozy mysteries so very cozy. Which makes it very similar to Elyan Hollow in yesterday’s book. But with a singular difference.

All the characters in Shady Hollow are animals. Which doesn’t mean that they aren’t people – because they absolutely are. Even if, or especially because, their species and its characteristics allows the story to overtly display certain facets of their personalities that have to be revealed a bit more obliquely in, let’s call them more traditional, cozy fantasies.

Take Vera Vixen for example. Vera is our protagonist, our amateur detective, and an ace investigative reporter for the local newspaper, the Shady Hollow Herald. The inquisitiveness and cunning of her fox species are assets in her chosen profession – no matter how much her boyfriend, Shady Hollow Police Chief Orville Braun – an actual bear – would prefer she be a bit more mouse-like and keep herself out of trouble.

Part of the magic of the series and the immersion in the place and the characters is that after the first few pages the human reader’s mind glosses over speculation about any details of how a romantic relationship between a fox and a bear would actually work – and what any resulting children would look like if there were any.

(I’ve always pictured those potential children as resembling the Cratchit Family in The Muppet Christmas Carol; the boys took after dad (Kermit) and the girls took after mom (Miss Piggy) – but your imagination may take you down other paths.)

This entry in the series – after the Halloween short Phantom Pond – takes Vera out of her familiar Shady Hollow setting and away from her police bear beau and takes her – along with her best friend, Lenore Lee and a whole, literal, actual boatload of students up the river to Summers End to observe the phenomenon for which the famous archaeological and astronomical site was built back in the Woodlands’ equivalent of prehistory.

So this is supposed to be an educational trip for the students. Vera and Lenore are along as chaperones – and to get a bit of a vacation in a picturesque little town as well. Vera even has a student of her own, as she’s agreed to mentor a budding reporter for the week.

Vera felt a bit out of her element trying to take care of – and ride herd on – a bunch of tweens and teens. But she finds herself needing all of her investigative skills when the group’s sunrise view of the Summers End phenomenon is obstructed – by a corpse.

Naturally – at least for Vera – she can’t stop herself from bringing her reporter’s eye and investigative mind to the grisly sight – even though that’s the last thing that the local police want.

She’s sure she’s helping the investigation. But Police Chief Buckthorn acts an awful lot as if what Vera is really doing is interfering with his coverup. It looks like Buckthorn has already decided who the murderer was – or perhaps that’s will be. And Vera can’t let that miscarriage of justice stand, not when his prime suspect is her best friend’s sister.

Escape Rating A-: This series has always struck me as being a bit of the case of the bear dancing – and pardon the pun about Orville Braun. But seriously, although the series NEVER takes itself too seriously, the whole thing has always struck me as something that one is not surprised is done well but that it’s done AT ALL.

But in this case it very much IS done well. Not that there isn’t a touch – or sometimes more than a touch – of whimsy involved. Howsomever, the heart of the story is ALWAYS the mystery, and the animal natures of the characters are very well played to poke at the vagaries and idiosyncrasies of human behavior – which are, of course, legion.

This particular entry in the series also struck me as being at the intersection of two points that I never expected to see intersect.

Summers End, the archaeological, anthropological and astronomical site, is guaranteed to make readers think of Stonehenge, possibly combined with something like Sutton Hoo to pull in the ancient burial ground aspect.

That combination allows for a whole lot of fascinating story points. There is a thread of dark academia running through the mystery, as Summers End is a huge archaeological site, there are still plenty of digs going on. Which means that the professors at the local university are constantly fighting over sites and rights and theories and tenure.

At the same time, as with any archaeological site, there are always artifacts being uncovered along with the temptations towards theft and fraud that follow. As do tourists who both want to visit the site AND take home a souvenir – legal or not.

But the part of the story that sticks – as the entries in this series often do – is the bit at that strange intersection. Because what gets found in Summers End – besides the murder and the mystery and cleanup of a whole lot of good old-fashioned – but not that old – corruption, is an old story that combines the famous but probably apocryphal quote from Margaret Mead that the earliest sign of civilization is “A healed femur” and the quip a tour guide at Stonehenge once made that the monument was built during the “loony Neolithic” because of just how much of the gross domestic product of the civilization that built it had to be devoted to something that provided neither food nor shelter nor seemingly anything else that a really primitive society would have needed really, seriously badly every single day.

So on the surface this is a murder mystery, a murder that happens for very prosaic and common reasons. The way that Vera and her friends pull together for the investigation is, as always, a whole lot of fun with just the right touch of intrigue and danger.

But it’s the uplift at the end, the way that the stories and legends of Summers End – and of the species who came together to build it at such an early period, and what that meant for the future of the region – that raises the whole thing just that bit higher while not taking a single jot of compulsive, page-turning, edge of the seat reading tension from the mystery and its fitting resolution.

Which is a big part of what makes me love the Shady Hollow series and leaves me always looking forward to the next. As I am right this minute.

#BookReview: Chaos at the Lazy Bones Bookshop by Emmeline Duncan

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews
#BookReview: Chaos at the Lazy Bones Bookshop by Emmeline DuncanChaos at the Lazy Bones Bookshop (Halloween Bookshop Mystery, #1) by Emmeline Duncan
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: cozy mystery, holiday mystery, mystery
Series: Halloween Bookshop Mystery #1
Pages: 256
Published by Kensington Cozies on July 23, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Bailey Briggs adores her year-round Halloween-themed town of Elyan Hollow, Oregon, but when she takes over her grandfather’s beloved bookshop, Lazy Bones Books, she accidentally discovers the town’s secret dark side . . .
Normally, spooky season is Bailey Briggs’ favorite time of year, and her Halloween-themed small town’s time to shine. But between managing Lazy Bones Books, working on her graphic novel-in-progress, and running the Spooky Season Literary Festival, Bailey hardly has a moment to enjoy Elyan Hollow’s spot-on seasonal vibes. Not to mention, at every turn she seems to be tripping over the contentious crew of Gone Ghouls, a ghost-hunting reality TV show currently filming around town. Bailey tries to stay focused on the Lit Festival, which is supposed to kick off Elyan Hollow’s annual Halloween Fair; instead, this year’s festival begins with a murder . . .
It’s bad enough Bailey discovered the victim, but now, as a lead suspect with some (admittedly) damning evidence pointing her way, she’s got to clear her name! With the help of her librarian friend, Colby, and Jack Skeleton, her world-class bookshop dog (and the absolute bestest boy ever), Bailey sets out to solve a murder . . .
As her investigation weaves through family secrets, professional rivalries, and town feuds, the list of suspects is growing fast . . . and unfortunately, so is the list of victims. If Bailey doesn’t find the killer soon, Elyan Hollow’s haunted reputation will get a little too real . . .

My Review:

Elyan Hollow, Oregon seems like just the kind of idyllic small town that makes people who read small town cozy mysteries – which this most definitely is – want to live in a small town just like it.

Elyan Hollow reads as if it’s exactly what you’d get if real towns like Frankenmuth, Michigan or nearby Leavenworth, Washington had decided to embrace The Nightmare Before Christmas all year round instead of, well, actual Christmas.

The town has truly embraced the ‘Spooky Season’, after a cozy horror movie was filmed there decades ago. The movie-set tourists brought so much to the town that Elyan Hollow decided to ‘lean in’ all year round.

Which explains both the name of Bailey Briggs’ bookstore, Lazy Bones Books, AND the theme of the town’s first annual literary festival, sponsored by Lazy Bones, of course, as part of the kickoff for this year’s Halloween season extravaganza.

Both fortunately and unfortunately, it also explains the town’s nearly magnetic attraction for horror authors (YAY!), paranormal romance writers (DOUBLE YAY!) and ghost hunting TV and streaming series (definitely not so yay).

Bailey has her hands full of the festival when all of those magnetic attractions collide in murder – with her shop and her festival at the center of a local detective’s suspicions and investigations.

Leaving Bailey, as the prime suspect in not one but two murders, desperate to clear her name. Which leaves her in precisely the situation that has put so many reluctant but innocent characters on the road to becoming amateur detectives.

Especially as Bailey has her own personal mystery to solve in the midst of this case. The first murder victim might very well have been the name that belonged in the blank spot on Bailey’s birth certificate labeled ‘father’.

Escape Rating B: There are a LOT of mysteries in Elyan Hollow – and the murder turns out to be the least interesting of them all. It’s also one of the few mysteries that gets resolved by the end of the book. Which is a good thing as this is the first book in a projected series.

On one side, there are the mysteries surrounding Bailey’s family – most of which do not get solved in this first book but absolutely do have an impact on Bailey and the story.

Bailey was raised by her grandparents because her teenage mother refused to let an accidental pregnancy spoil her plans to become a doctor. Which she did. Bailey grew up feeling like an afterthought in her mother’s life, well aware that the family her mother created at the proper time is her mother’s REAL family in seemingly all the ways that counts.

Bailey’s grandparents WERE her parents in all the ways that counted, but there are still plenty of holes in Bailey’s heart as well as in her knowledge of where she came from – such as the totally missing information about who her sperm donor might have been.

There are also plenty of current family secrets, as her grandfather has already deeded the family bookshop to Bailey but has not revealed that fact to Bailey’s uncle who is constantly scheming and digging for ways to wrest control of it for its prime downtown location. That’s a mystery that must be coming to a head later because it’s still VERY murky at the end of this book.

Then there’s the festival, the ghost program, and the returning hometown boys made more-or-less good who have come back for one or the other. Both men went to high school with Bailey’s mom, but neither have returned home in the intervening years. Both have secrets that may possibly have to do with Bailey – but it’s no secret that neither can stand the other.

Yet, when one of them is murdered, all the police suspicion falls on Bailey – which feels like more than a bit of a stretch on the part of an overwhelmed detective grabbing at straws and circumstances instead of anything remotely like a real investigation.

Which is where Bailey’s amateur efforts inevitably come in.

I fell in love with Elyan Hollow, and I REALLY liked Bailey and her ‘Scooby Gang’. It helps a LOT that Bailey has every reader’s dream job of owning and running a bookstore – and that it’s dreamy enough that she’s being VERY successful at it though dint of her own hard work. Her best friend is one of the librarians at the local public library, and their bonds to books and over books really shine through.

The mysteries that needed to get solved got solved, but the family mess is, well, messy and that looks like it will continue to be so in the books ahead.

In the end, this series starter reminded me a lot and fondly of Small Town, Big Magic (before the protagonist discovers that she’s really a witch) and Shady Hollow (only with human people instead of animal people). The small towns all have similar charms and the characters have similar and endearing quirks. (Check out my review of the latest book in the Shady Hollow series, Summers End, later this week to see if you agree.)

All of which means that I’ll be keeping my reading eye out for the second book in the Halloween Bookshop Mystery series whenever it appears out of the mist of anticipated reads.