One of the best books of the year!
Sherry is the librarian we all want to be; solving cozy mysteries in her cozy upstate New York small town. She has all the tropes as friends: earnest young priest, slightly zany new friend, slightly stick-in-the-mud old friend, odd neighbors, and a cute sort of boyfriend who owns the obligatory cozy small-town antique shop. The problem with solving all these murders is that Sherry must figure out WHY. Why are all these murders happening in her little bitty town? Why is her cat suddenly speaking to her in the voice of a demon? and, more importantly, how can she stop it?
This book was so good that I was up late finishing it. The mystery parts are well done-they are twisty and I had no idea, as usual, who did what until the wrap-up at the end. The paranormal is not just crammed into the plot. It IS the plot. What Sherry is finding out as the story progresses is some seriously spooky things. There were a couple of scary parts but mostly this is a COZY paranormal. This isn’t a mythical, parallel universe kind of paranormal, it’s all very normal and makes perfect sense. The reader gets lots of humor (the CAT is hilarious!!) and realistic dialogue as the characters interact with each other like real people. Everyone has a secret including Sherry.
The blurbs I read about the book called it Buffy the Vampire Slayer meets Murder, She Wrote. And that is accurate but I also felt it was a little like Twin Peaks. Everything is cozy and normal but there is an underlying weirdness that creeps up on the reader and all of a sudden, whammo, something strange happens.
The writing is excellent and the plotting is tight with only a couple of things I had to read twice to make it make sense. The cozy parts were perfect and the paranormal parts hit the right balance between too scary and too tepid. I also like the hint at the end that we might get to read more about Sherry in another book.
I was given a copy of the book to read/share my opinion and my opinion is to put this at the top of your Halloween/Spooky Season ‘OTTER’ read list. The awesome cover art also deserves a shout-out: 10 points for Gryffindor. 4 big fat stars and highly recommended.