Category Archives: Bookish

Visits to book releases, signings and any author or book related event.

Five Things (22)

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Five cozy mystery series with a magical twist.

Does it have mystery or intrigue; I’ll read it! Whether it’s Agatha Christie or Tara French, any novel with a good mystery and a good twist is a novel for me. I’ve started reading more in the cozy mystery subgenre since the shutdown as a way to get away from “real life” so I feel like I have a good selection of books I can recommend.
Cozy mysteries that I gravitate towards generally have three key elements:
a. there must be an amateur sleuth and the crime affects either the amateur or their friend/loved one.
b. a romantic interest that’s either in law enforcement, or law enforcement adjacent, or else some close friend turned love interest.
c. most of the novel is spent doing something completely unrelated to the crime (which happens off page) like attending parties, baking cookies, knitting… you get the drift.

Within the cozy mystery subgenre, my favorite type is a cozy with a magical twist! These are cozies where the protagonist is also a magical person, like a witch or a psychic. I tend to lean toward the witch device, so here are five cozy mysteries with a magical twist.

Kicking this off with the witchy cozy mystery that made me love the witchy cozy mystery subgenre – Heather Blake’s Wishcraft Mystery. This remains one of my top five cozy mysteries. Darcy and Harper recently lost their dad when their mom’s sister comes back into their lives to tell them that they are witches, and not just any kind of witches but witches that grant wishes. It’s such a funny premise but quite endearing and the characters are pretty out there, but somehow it all works. The romantic interest is of course a retired cop – a single dad with an eleven-year-old who later goes back into law enforcement. There are nine books in the series and while you don’t have to read them in order I would recommend reading them in order since there are some repeating themes that tie the entire series together.

Amanda Flower’s Magical Bookshop series with fun names like Crime and Poetry, and Prose and Cons is next. Currently, there are five books out about Violet, who rushed to her grandma Daisy after she thought Daisy was ill. Instead, she found that Daisy tricked her into coming back to her small town so she could continue the family legacy of running the magical bookshop – the one with a huge magical tree growing inside. Violet ends up staying after her Grandma becomes a prime suspect in a murder case and of course, with the help of the books (yes books) and a magical cat, she solves the crime! This one also has a law enforcement beau, though that comes a little later in the series.

Due to the campiness of the premise I have to include Nancy Warren’s Vampire Knitting Club. Lucy’s grandmother died and left her a knit shop in Oxford so, to get away from her annoying ex she decided to spend time running the shop. Except, her grandmother isn’t really dead because she is a vampire, and those vampires meet in the shop at night to knit; oh, and Lucy finds out from her grandmother that she’s a witch. It’s so silly, and even though they didn’t play the witch plot up as much as I hoped I still devoured all fourteen books. While the love interest here isn’t law enforcement adjacent, he is a vampire who was around since the Elizabethan times. I do have to make an honorable mention to Warren’s Village Flower Shop series which also follows a witch but this time the magic is explored more.

While I consider Juliet Blackwell’s Witchcraft Mystery series to be cozy I think this one might be a bit darker than the rest. Lily runs a vintage clothing shop and part of her magic is to feel vibrations off of old clothing, so a lot of the mysteries deal with clothing in some way. I’ve read the first three from the series so far and will definitely keep reading but I like to keep these for the fall when the spooky season rolls around. I say it’s a little darker because it explores a lot of legends and Blackwell’s descriptions are so immersive at times that you may or may not want to keep the lights on when you go to bed.

While there are only two books in the series and the author has yet to announce a third I will also mention Auralee Wallace’s Evenfall Witches B&B series. Brynn is living with her aunts after the death of her husband. Brynn’s magic is affected – she can speak to the dead – and so we see her dealing with both losses while also trying to save her aunt from a murder conviction. It has a large cast of characters and all of them are interesting to read, the aunts in this series remind me slightly of a version of Zelda and Hilda from Sabrina. From what I found online, Wallace has been sick so unable to write, I wish her well and a speedy recovery.

Happy reading!

~*~

“Oh,” Harper said solemnly. “I love books.”

Heather Blake, It Takes a Witch

Five Things (19)

Posted in Bookish, The Telly, Thoughts by

Happy Earth Day! I spun a wheel and won a succulent.

Well, the title told the entire story, so here’s a letter to my succulent.

Dear Gregor the Succulent,
It’s not your fault I won you, but I will try to keep you alive until the next Earth Day – the one in 2024, not the one in a few days. I’ve never been a good plant mom and I really don’t want to try raising a plant, especially after I read that they cry. But I will set a reminder on my phone and hopefully, your location will provide you with the perfect amount of sunlight.
Yours,
Me.

The pollen has arrived!

Every year I fool myself into thinking that I can go without allergy meds and every year the pollen wins1. I could hate pollen for what it does to my body, but the beautiful blooms wouldn’t exist without it, so I’ll take my allergy meds and suffer through the few weeks of intense pollination to watch the flowers bloom. I don’t know why I went from zero allergies to crazy allergies, but I loved the botanical sexism theory… alas, it’s since been debunked.

23 & Me, and then some.

I was pretty bored when I was recovering from a major surgery some years ago and one of the things I did was take an ancestry test because I was curious. What’s interesting to me is that since then the breakdown of my ancestry has gotten more and more precise – for example, they can now pinpoint (with accuracy) my country of origin – it’s a footnote that while my ancestry is elsewhere people from my background are found in that country and region. I had a few unassigned percentages left – some trace ancestry that they couldn’t assign yet. Well, I recently logged in and part of that trace ancestry has been assigned as Sardinian. There’s still a tiny bit of trace ancestry left, so I’m really curious if they will figure that out someday.

My favorite thing about 23 & Me though is their algorithm thinks that I have the genetic muscle composition common in elite power athletes2. I guess I’ve missed my calling.

Some cozy media recommendations.

This year I decided that I needed more cozy in my life, I started reading more cozy books, playing cozy games, and looking for cozy shows or movies3. Cozy shows are hard to find but I discovered that Hallmark Movies & Mysteries had a lot of cozy movies based on books, my fave has been the Aurora Teagarden movies. However, a few months ago I was reintroduced to the PBS Masterpiece shows and started watching Miss Scarlet and The Duke, which I absolutely love; and which has led me to one of my new fave cozy mysteries books, the Veronica Speedwell series.

If you’re looking for a fun female protagonist who is breaking the rules and conventions of her time while also solving mysteries, then I highly recommend Scarlet and Veronica. Also, any period piece is a fave for me.

Mom…

It’s been two years and counting since I lost my mom, and every day I feel that loss. There’s so much I want to ask her, and so many things I wish she was around to see and experience. The first year I felt like I was in fixing mode — I needed to take care of everything and take care of my dad. The following year I tried to grieve but I was busy making sure that both houses were taken care of. Now I feel like I’ve found a rhythm, and I’m settling down a bit, hanging with friends again, yet in the quiet moments, it hits me and I can finally grieve.

~*~

1 Maybe this is the plants’ way of getting back at me.

2 I did run a half marathon once!

3 I still listen to my murder podcasts

And I chose you the one I was dancin’ with, in New York, no shoes… looked up at the sky and it was, maroon

– Taylor Swift

Philly – A Weekend

Posted in Bookish, Cultured, Gallery, Vacations by

There was a part of me that assumed I couldn’t travel on my own, and it was that part of me that I wanted to challenge. Travelling with friends is fun – as long as you and the friends are compatible travelling companions, and I’m lucky to have some good friends that are great travel buddies. Still, I wondered what it would be like to set my own pace, to wake up at 11 am and spend three hours wandering a museum or sitting in a park reading a newly purchased book from the local bookstore, simply because I fancied doing so at the time. So, when I was started feeling a deep desire to spend time alone, I took a random weekend trip to Philadelphia.

I had to set goals, I wanted to see two places of interest, the Liberty Bell and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and I wanted to visit at least one local bookstore – if I purchase something, that would be a plus!

After arriving by Amtrak on Friday afternoon, making my way to my Airbnb for the weekend (in the heart of the city!) and finding some cheesesteak at Reading Terminal Market, I decided to map out my weekend. The next day I’d try to visit the Liberty Bell and take a walk across town to the museum, then the following day it would be bookstores and shops. Continue reading →

InstaReview: The Sun is Also a Star

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Every since I read the NTY article on it, I have been intrigued with the 36 questions that gave you an intimate look into anyone’s life – even strangers. Just the idea of it was really intriguing, so, after reading rave reviews about The Sun is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon, and the fact that she integrated this study in her story, I had to add it to my TBR pile. Then, after seeing that it was one of the BOTM picks, I had to get it!

[Caption] ✨ The Sun is Also a Star, ☀️ by Nicola Yoon is part humour, part tear-jerker and overall brilliant. It’s told from the perspectives of Natasha 🇯🇲 and Daniel 🇰🇷🇺🇸, with a smattering of stories from the people who shifted their paths during the day they first met.

There were times where I found myself wondering about the seemingly endless day of travelling around Manhattan – no “train traffic up ahead”? – and a few times where I had to go back to see who was telling the story; but after getting into the rhythm of the storytelling, I found myself engrossed, until the last tearful sentence. Seriously, read the last few chapters at home.

This book is more than just a romantic tale (cheers on the great use of the 36 Questions to Fall in Love article). The characters are diverse and their interactions felt real, and that’s what makes me love it so much. It could be the story of someone I know. ⭐⭐⭐⭐

~*~

… written by Libba Bray

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Libba Bray @ The Scholastic Store in SoHo

 

After reading the Gemma Doyle trilogy, I was absolutely enthralled with Libba Bray‘s storytelling style. It was imaginative, it was magical, it sucked me in and made me struggle to take my time to savour the tale because I wanted, so badly, to devour it.

Later, I picked up her Going Bovine standalone and was both impressed and perplexed. Perplexed with the surrealness of the story itself (what’s real/what’s in his head), and impressed by her ability to string the absolutely absurd together in such a way that makes you want to keep on reading.

Then, Beauty Queens was released by Scholastic and I was privileged to attend a signing done at the Scholastic Store (pictured above). Beauty Queens was satire and wit. There are a lot of characters, but they never felt flat. It’s definitely absurd, but that absurdity helps to expose the reader to a thoughtful narrative on popular culture, and modern society.

From this point, I pretty much vowed to buy everything Libba released, so when The Diviners came out, I was ready for anything. The Diviners had a lot of things I loved; the roaring 20s, mystery and a touch of the supernatural. Ok, a lot of the supernatural, so much so that I stopped reading this book before I went to bed because it was hard to turn off my imaginings. The main protagonist (Evie) was self-centered, and while I am not a fan of books with main characters like that, she didn’t annoy me as much as I thought she would (though she tried to really hard in the end).

So, after reading an 1800s fantasy series set in England, a surreal dark comedy set in NOLA, an absurd satire, and a 1920s paranormal/historical series set in New York, I think it’s safe to say that Libba Bray is a versatile author; and I’m probably still going to read everything she publishes.

~*~