I saw this in my local bookshop last week and almost fell over in shock – I’ve never seen a cozy – especially not a mass market cozy – for sale in an Australian bookstore before. It sounded promising, and I want to encourage bookstores here to embrace a wider variety of sub genres, so I picked it up.
It wasn’t bad – I’ll happily read the second one – but it wasn’t without its problems. The MC thinks she’s going to be more capable of solving the crime than the local sheriff, which is always a turn off for me. I dislike arrogance in my amateur detectives unless their names are Sherlock Holmes. But on the plus side, she’s humbled a time or two and she’s graceful about it. The dynamic between her and her ex-husband was a bit cliche, as was the tension between herself and the sheriff.
The plotting was ambitious; Berry made it work, but it was just this side of a stretch even for cozy mysteries.
There is a second one out now and I’ll happily give it a try to see if the kinks in characterisation is worked out, but it definitely has potential.