Nice cozy book. I liked the characters, but I wasn't wowed. And I got a bit confused with all the side- characters. I wasn't sure who was who anymore. Still, a bunch of quirky witches and a murder mystery. It was fun. ( )

A very cosy, magical murder mystery.
Dead guests, dead husbands and death witches - it was very sweet and simple but enjoyable. ( )

I had already written a lukewarm but overall not too scathing review about this, intending to just DNF and be done with it.
Luckily or rather not so luckily I kept reading for a few more chapters which allowed me to discover a mountain of absurdity and stupidity in the form of a public town council meeting.
I talk about events in the book up to chapter 30 or so but I try not to spoiler anything major beyond the initial story setup.

The MCs grief:
We discover very early on that the MC has retreated from society and doesn't leave the house she is living in with her 2 aunts and 1 uncle (I think?). We later find out that this is due to grief over her dead husband she hasn't recovered from.
Part of the story is about her overcoming her grief and finding her way back into society and while the portrayal of the sorrow itself is well done, the process of overcoming it is rather shallow. (at least up to the point where I dropped the book)

The inciting incident:
The core conflict that gets the plot moving is a murder than happens in their house which is also a BnB.
One of her aunts gets accused based on flimsy evidence and motive at best but everyone treats it like she is really in danger of going to prison if her name isn't cleared. This serves as the core motivator to get the MC out of her long-lasting retreat from society. She then investigates the circumstances on her own. This whole endeavor seemed weird to me. She doesn't work together with the police and she can not collect physical evidence that would be admissible in court either. It wasn't precisely pointless and she really figures a few things out but as you might expect she gets manipulated quite a lot too because she has no systematic approach whatsoever. She basically just runs around and talks to people for 20 chapters.

The family:
The MCs family is meant to be a little dysfunctional in a cutsie kind of way but the author apparently didn't notice how pathologically dysfunctional this family really ended up being.
The way the two aunts just casually violate personal boundaries constantly and how the MC isn't even mad about it infuriates me. If a family member of mine would've done some of the things they do I would never have talked to that person again in my life. (Well, maybe that is a little too dramatic, but I at least would've felt like that in the moment.) But the MC just waves most of it away and the worst stuff is only worth a stern look. And I am not talking about one single incident. It happens constantly and with manipulative magic spells and spelled food etc. too sometimes.
There supposedly is a kind of karma component to how the magic works but apparently karma is passed out drunk in a dumpster somewhere because what the hell is karma doing not setting their house on fire considering how they casually fling manipulative and intrusive spells around willy nilly against everyone. What the hell would they have to do for karma to actually punish them?!

The plot:
The story doesn't feel like it is going anywhere original. Quite a bit of the story felt like a slog and most of the rest was just a run-of-the-mill cozy mystery but without a love interest.
That is one original thing about this book. It doesn't try to force a dark and handsome love interest into the cozy mystery for a romantic happily ever after which is particularly important because the MC is a grieving widow.
But the book doesn't do anything with it. It's not capitalizing on this difference that breaks the mold! You were brave enough to refrain from a cheesy clichée romance! Do something with that and don't just leave dead air there!
Maybe I just haven't read far enough to encounter precisely this handsome love interest yet.
The overall structure was a bit all over the place which I sometimes enjoy if the story that is being told is interesting and original but the building blocks were all well known tropes and clichées.

Characters:
The aunts and the MC were well crafted if a bit exaggerated in their character traits.
A lot of the other characters are missing depth but not all of them are cardboard cutouts of clichéed tropes at least.

The council meeting (around chapter 30):
The point where I dropped the book was during a town council meeting that is coopted to accuse her aunt of the murder again even though it was specifically stated before that this wouldn't be a topic of discussion.
It instead devolves into a cheap imitation of a trial in a phoenix wright game. The book is going for an exciting fight in a public court but it fails miserably. The only part that is missing is someone shouting "objection". But in contrast to those games, none of the arguments make any sense. The book treats the different arguments and points like they are somehow coherent but there is no consistent logic behind any of them. It's almost as if someone states "this chair is brown and therefore it must be 9oclock" and everyone just implicitly agrees. The author is trying to create a tense situation with high but uncertain stakes but she has nothing to back this up so it just falls flat.

Well, there you have it. Tired clichéed tropes everywhere and the bits that are original are badly executed. Not horrible but not good either.
(The book is better written than this review at least.)
Do not recommend. ( )

sweet and charming ( )

A fun beginning to the Evenfall Witches B&B series. I love that Nora is so spicy and doesn't take crap from anyone. I love that Brynn finds her way back to her magic by the end of the story (although I already knew this because I read When the Crow's Away first). I am hopeful that Auralee Wallace will write a third book in the series as I love the mixture of paranormal and cozy mystery. ( )