Tag Archives: cozy mystery

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Book Review: A Claim to Murder, by Jean G. Goodhind

I accepted an e-copy of  Jean G. Goodhind‘s A Claim to Murder for review.

A Claim to Murder Book Cover

Life couldn’t be sweeter for Honey Driver, floating around the Med on her own private yacht, with her dishy detective husband Steve.

But dark clouds are gathering on Honey’s perfect horizon. And the forecast looks like murder!

When Honey’s love boat sinks in a freak accident, she has no choice but to return to rain-drenched Bath. But now that Honey needs him, her insurance broker, silver-tongued Norman Glendower, is nowhere to be found.

He’s not at his luxury offices in town and he’s not answering his phone.

Honey could kill Norman for leaving her in this fix. But what if someone got there first?

Behind the gates of leafy Regency Gardens, the exclusive complex where Norman lives, something is terribly amiss. Norman’s mewling cat leads a curious neighbour straight to his dead body!

He’s been bludgeoned and left for dead on the pristine tiles of his designer kitchen. Which of his many enemies was the one to strike the fatal blow?

Honey’s on the case — with a killer watching her every move . . .

my review

I’m going to preface this review with the caveat that I’m not a massive reader of mysteries (cozy, British, or otherwise). This one came across my TBR largely by accident. But I gave it a good go, and I didn’t hate it. That’s faint praise, I know, but the most honest expression of how I feel.

I didn’t hate it. I liked that the characters are older but still active and with internal lives of their own, and honestly, I liked them well enough. But I was bored for a lot of the book. I didn’t feel the loss of a quarter of a million dollar investment was adequately mourned, and very little seemed to actually happen, investigation-wise, until right at the end. And then I thought the narrative treatment of a well-pulled-together, influencer-type woman to be clichéd. It has just a little too much of a whiff of shaming women who are proud of or use their looks for their own (as opposed to the patriarchy’s) gain.

All in all, this was middle of the road for me. But it might be a bigger winner for someone who especially likes cozy, British mysteries.

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Book Review: Murder at the UFO Festival, by Kaja Fivecrows

I picked up a copy of Murder at the UFO Festival by Kaja Fivecrows as an Amazon freebie.

murder at the ufo festival cover

“Having only one husband? In this economy?”

34-year-old Alexandria Bellecourt runs her small-town Oregon bed & breakfast like a well-oiled machine, with her severe, harsh husband Grayson in charge of finances and her warm, friendly husband Greg in charge of promotions.

But all this organization goes down the toilet during the annual UFO Festival. Alexandria doesn’t realize that hidden among the psychics, aura readers, and alien abductees, one of her guests is an abrasive skeptic with a lot of enemies. After he threatens to expose her other guests as frauds, he gets stabbed in the back, seriously disrupting brunch.

Her bed & breakfast is suddenly plunged headlong into a murder investigation, and Alexandria has a lot on her plate already, like why isn’t the guillotine working for her husband Greg’s amateur play and why does her husband Grayson have a suspicious amount of combat skills for an accountant?

When the rest of her guests start getting targeted one by one, Alexandria is going to have to go undercover at the UFO Festival to find out who the culprit is. Can she and her husbands discover who the murderer is before getting targeted themselves or, even worse, getting a bad guest review?

my review

This was OK. I enjoyed it well enough. I did, however, find the characterization shallow. The reader is not given anywhere near enough background on the characters or their situation to feel satisfied. Don’t get me wrong, I liked them, Grayson especially. But they are cardboard cutouts more than fleshed-out characters.

While the mystery was entertaining, I rather suspect the story of how Grey, Grayson, and Alexandria met and evolved into the throuple we meet here would be a more interesting story than what the reader is offered in this book, which would be fine if that book existed. But as far as I can see, it doesn’t, which means the reader feels its lack. Further, I quibble that this doesn’t qualify as Why Choose as there is no choosing involved. The throuple is established and comfortably married before the book even starts. Maybe that’s just me, though.

Lastly, the merging of cozy mystery and an attempt at spice didn’t really work. The sex scenes felt shoehorned in and often out of place. I wouldn’t be surprised to discover that this was written as a cozy mystery, and the author later added the sex scenes to try and catch a broader audience. All in all, I’d read another, but it isn’t topping a favorites list.
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Book Review – Witch Myth: Wildfire, by Alexandria Clarke

I picked up an Audible code for a free copy of Witch Myth: Wildfire, by Alexandria Clarke. The cover looks Christmasy, even if the blurb doesn’t. So, I’d meant to read it over the Christmas break but never got around to it. So, I listened to it on Twelfth Night as I took the Christmas decorations down.

witch myth widfire audio cover

When a 16-year-old girl disappears from her hometown without a trace, stumping the local police force, the only person who has any hope of finding her is her older sister, Kennedy. The siblings share an otherworldly bond, which leads Kennedy to the peculiar, deserted town of Yew Hollow. Kennedy soon uncovers a coven of witches, a tragic secret, and something that she never knew about herself. When her number one priority is her little sister’s safety, Kennedy’s decision to stay in or leave Yew Hollow is the hardest one she’ll ever make.

my review

As I said, I picked this up because the cover made me think it was a Christmas story. But it isn’t. It’s set in October and ends long before December. I suspect that if I took the time to look, I’d find that this isn’t the cover the book always has, but that the author changed it to catch the seasonal readers. I feel a little manipulated by that, if I’m honest. (Of course, doing that would require figuring out the naming convention of having two books…maybe series…named Witch Myth and even Witch Myth: Wildfire, explicitly. I’m confused.)

I thought this was ok. Not fabulous, but not complete trash either. But I wouldn’t call it a cozy paranormal mystery. Paranormal, yes. Mystery, yes. But there is very little cozy to be had. So, don’t go in expecting anything the cover or subtitle leads you to expect. Yeah, still feeling a little manipulated over here.

All in all, I liked the characters, and the writing was mechanically fine. But the story feels like a spin-off, the characterization is on the simple side, and the book ends on a cliffhanger at exactly the point it feels like the actual story (as opposed to all the setup) looks to actually be starting.

witch myth photoLastly, the audio production and narration were only OK. Several words were oddly pronounced. Let me rephrase; a lot of words are mispronounced. And there is the occasional noticeable blip in the smoothness of the narrative, where you could tell it has been spliced together. Both of these yanked me out of the story when they happened.

So, all in all, not a real winner for me. But mostly, it just didn’t catch and hold my attention. I think those who like the genre will enjoy it.


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