Tag Archives: cozy mysteries

Books I loved (so far) in 2023…

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Looking through my Storygraph I decided to pull out five of my top-rated books this year, so without much preamble, let’s get into it!

A Brush With Shadows by Anna Lee Huber is book six in the Lady Darby Mysteries, a series that I absolutely love. Set in the 1800s, Lady Darby is a widow, whose husband wasn’t the best person when he was alive. He forced her to draw human cadavers and when that was revealed after he passed away, she was shunned from society, so she’s a bit salty with society. Each book follows a different mystery that she and her partner Sebastian Gabe ends up solving, but my favorite thing about this book (outside of Huber’s great storytelling) is just how real the characters feel.

The other Anna Lee Huber book that I loved this year was Treacherous Is the Night, the second book of the Verity Kent mysteries. This one is set after WWI when Verity worked as a spy – something that she couldn’t tell anyone in her life, including her husband1. Just like her Lady Darby series, Huber knows how to pull you into her worlds, creating complex characters and weaving exciting mysteries. While I won’t call either series a cozy mystery, the independent amateur female detective motif is the center of both.

Continuing in the mystery vain, Murder on Mulberry Bend by Victoria Thompson is the fifth book in the Gaslight Mysteries series set in New York City at the turn of the century. This follows a midwife (who comes from an affluent New York family), who solves crimes while also taking care of pregnant women across the city. One thing I love about this series is how Sarah Brandt’s backstory and the mystery of her husband’s death are interwoven across all the books. I’ve read eight of these books so far and will definitely be reading the rest.2

This book has been on my TBR pile for a long time and I finally read it this year, The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune was an excellent read. The story is heartwarming and the children are wonderfully written, I love them all. The characters are complex and the world-building is great. I would call this more of a cozy fantasy book, because while there is conflict the focus is more on the characters and relationships.

Finally Vespertine by Margaret Rogerson. I have loved every Margaret Rogerson book that I’ve read so far, and I’m surprised I don’t see her mentioned a lot more on BookTok, but Vespertine was a good read with her signature style of world-building and her down-to-earth female protagonists. The ending leaves it open for a second book, which I would definitely be adding to my TBR.

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1. This reminds me a little bit of the Bletchley Circle – only because there is a group of women who worked in codebreaking during WW1.
2. At this point I realized that my top 15 books this year were all mysteries so if I decided to throw a few of my favourite fantasies that I read this year into the mix.

“We all must deal with our shadows the best we can. No one can conquer them for us.”

Anna Lee Huber, The Anatomist’s Wife

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.

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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