Sub: Cozy

“He fears me because he is small. I will not meet him there. I will not shrink myself down to his size, or anyone else’s, for their comfort. For their appeasement.”

★★★★

Berkely Books | 2021

Filed Under: Feminist Witch Bitch Lit

Don’t let the synopsis and marketing for this book fool you. This is not horror. This is not a thriller. This is a cozy semi-mystery with Gilmore Girls meets Practical Magic vibes and a feminist tilt.

While I might have been expecting horror initially, I adjusted my expectations and ended up really liking this. It’s fucking cute and reads like Rachel Harrison has found her writing niche with this novel.

I really liked Harrison’s first novel, The Return. That was definitely horror but with a heavy female-friendship theme that propelled the plot. Cackle follows in those footsteps, but abandons horror for delightful supernatural elements, like the friendly, top-hat-wearing spider that sleeps under a little blanket at night.

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★★★

Minotaur Books | 2017

Filed Under: Birthday cards and beer bottles doing their best to be creepy

This novel reads like the author really likes to watch the Hallmark Channel or Lifetime movies. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing if you’re into that.

Thor knows, I’ve binged all of the Aurora Teagarden movies like a fucking champ.

The Vanishing Season ticks off a lot of boxes on the “Cozy Lifetime Mystery Checklist.”

That’s a thing. Let’s go through it…

In a small town (✓), Abigail Hathaway, who now goes by Ellery and escaped a serial killer as a teenager (✓), is now a cop herself (✓). But no one knows about her dark past (✓) and she intends to keep it that way. Ellery, with knowledge no one else has (✓), connects three seemingly unrelated missing persons cases that she’s never worked on (✓) and decides there must be a copycat killer in her tiny town (✓), but no one believes her (✓) and won’t unless she outs her true identity (✓). What this killer really wants is her (✓)! The killer starts to leave her notes and packages to let her know he knows who she is and is watching her (✓).

Ellery calls for backup in the form of a disgraced FBI agent (✓), who also happens to be the same agent that saved her from certain death all those years ago (✓).

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