I’ve been interested in cozy mysteries for some time now. I found this one randomly at work right before Christmas. It takes place in New Orleans in December…so that was really interesting to me since I live close to New Orleans and planned to do a bunch of holiday events there. The major appeal was the Winter Market that was described in the synopsis. It sort of lead me to believe it would be a quaint little Orleans story, and it was for the most part. New Orleans was described in great detail and It actually made me look at the map a few times. It really made me want to explore more of the city.
The characters were written great in my opinion. I noticed some reviews were saying that they changed a lot from previous books, but I cant really comment on consistency since I haven’t read any other books yet. I’d imagine it would be hard though, 14 books in, to keep the characters from being stagnant while also keeping them true to themselves. I do plan on reading more books very soon, so I will have a better idea then. The only slight issue I had was with Squirrel and Mooney. I guess they are supposed to be light, fun characters…but they kind of seemed like weird, uncouth to me. I guess that’s a little harsh.
I really enjoyed the plot. The actual mystery related elements were spread out pretty far but the filler bits, society events, scrapbooking, etcs. were fabulous. Gave me such high hopes for the rest of the series. I did figure out the who of the mystery pretty early on… I just didn’t know how or why. It was a pretty interesting crime concept. The only thing that seemed pretty silly was the confrontation and reveal at the end….seemed way to chaotic and dramatic. They could have easily waited outside with handcuffs. In real life, debacles like that ruin peoples reputation….but I guess bookland is different. And I understand that books need to have a big finishing.
I will definitely be reading more in this series as well as other series from this author. I already got another book and am excited to crack it open. This author is consider a “thrillzy” writer…that means thriller/cozy mystery…woot. Maybe my new favorite subgenre.