Reviews

I had a blast with this book. Apparently I'm a cozy mystery person. Who knew? Everything from the small town conservatism to the hypocrisy to the gossip to the comfy little houses to the secrets brimming under the surface appealed to me. I loved that despite there being a murder there was still this totally easy vibe cast over everything; it wasn't that nobody cared, but the world was simply so charming even murder couldn't break the immersion.

Yes, it's certainly terrible Otto died. Side note, did you hear about him and Reginald's fight last week at Joe's? Rinse, repeat. I was amused by how well Juneau Black depicted the capricious nature of beast (human) interest. Compassion always seems to take a backseat to titillation.

The mystery, unfortunately, left much to be desired. Spoilers are in spoiler brackets so don't worry.

At about halfway into the book it became clear that the author was stalling for time to maintain the mystery. This manifested in Vera, the supposedly star journalist, ignoring obvious leads for no reason.

Early on in the book Vera thinks to go to Otto’s home to look for clues. She finds his journal written in code. She totally abandons this line of inquiry from the get go. She doesn’t try to get it translated until days later, leading up to the big climax. The beast she takes it to is able to do it in a single day and lives permanently in Shady Hollow. A journalist of her apparent caliber would absolutely have taken it to him sooner. The only reason she doesn’t is to preserve the pacing of the narrative which I would have had no problem with if it were not so unfeasibly ludicrous for her to ignore such an obvious step in working on the case.

A character tells her they were involved in a crime that overlapped with the murder in some fashion. This character disappears from town afterwards so she can't question them further. But, she finds out they have a partner no one knew about because they live in an adjacent area. Yet she doesn't pursue the partner to seek out more answers despite knowing exactly where the partner lives. In the end the partner actually has to come to Vera.

She spends the rest of the book confused about who it could be, still attempting to piece together who could have killed Otto and another character. She never factors what the aforementioned character told her into her investigation. She operates as if this character never told her anything at all. I don't know why they didn't become the main suspect when they basically admitted to being an accessory. Vera even goes out of her way to defend this character when her best friend Lenore suggests them during a think session. It was such a bizarre decision by Juneau Black as she seemed to expect the reader to just forget that this character had confessed to something so significant.

Several times, Vera will say that Orville is mishandling the case because she assumes his intentions. Yet, as the reader we are occasionally granted Orville's perspective where it's clear he is not doing certain actions for the reasons she thinks.

When Orville arrests Lefty, the local criminal, she thinks he's simply taking the easy way out by knabbing the most likely suspect despite the lack of evidence. From Orville's point of view he's picking up Lefty because it will keep the townsfolk from panicking. Lefty was wanted for some other crime anyways, so it wasn't false imprisonment either. I was confused what this was intended to demonstrate to the reader about Vera when she was obviously wrong as per the text, but was never made the wiser.

Vera's (admittedly) small arc was about recognizing she didn't have to do everything alone. Confronting her subconscious inclination to think lesser of others' opinions would have fit neatly into that. She assumed Orville didn't know what he was doing, thus, she viewed all of his actions through a framework based only on confirming her bias. She never gave him the benefit of the doubt or recognized how hard he was trying in spite of his lack of experience.

It was particularly egregious given the fact that the two are intended to be romantically involved by the novels’ end. Why not use their miscommunication as an opportunity to progress the relationship meaningfully? I picked up on it because it had a certain feel to it that I’m familiar with, but it’d be super easy to miss. I didn’t need more pronounced romance as I liked the minimalist feel. However, there could have been more attention paid to fleshing out the basic respect each had for the other on a beastial level so it would be believable these two would want to date in the first place. Without laying the groundwork I could easily see the romance seeming out of left field.

Vera is led to a theory about who the killer could be. While the motive seems good it has a glaring hole that Vera should be aware of. The proposed killer needs to have grounds to kill two different people. This theory only works for the 2nd, she has to stretch it to fit the first. It made me question Vera’s capacity as a journalist if she could be so easily led down a path by a suspicious party. I was unimpressed that she had to be handed the answer - the killer decides to simply take her out of the equation since she won’t’ drop it - rather than piecing it together on her own. She was super close already. How much more difficult would it have been to let her figure it out right before the killer makes the final stand?

Also the choice in killer seems to fly in the face of the underlying warning to form your own opinions rather than be guided by small town judgment. The killer actually proves their nonsense right. Spoiler for who the killer is ->

Spoiler

The killer is Ruby, a sheep who many beasts in town shame for her sexual choices. Ruby doesn’t deserve to be slut-shamed, but the problem is that her being a killer means they were correct to be dubious of her character. Also, it isn’t just that she has sex a lot, it’s that she’s sleeping with a married man Of course, people are going to doubt her integrity.

The book wants you to feel empathy for the killer, but it’s difficult to do so when there is a level of culpability involved in their behavior that is being disregarded.

I will not lie, the mystery falling flat did take some of the wind out of my sails. Still, I absolutely will be reading the sequel. I had so much fun in this universe. The writing style is right up my alley. I loved all of the characters. I’m super interested in seeing where the town goes in the future now that this great tragedy has set a new status quo. I highly recommend it.