A review by mkwojcie
Tart of Darkness by Denise Swanson

1.0

I picked up this book 50% because of a desire to branch out beyond my normal genres of nonfiction, literary fiction, and memoir, and 50% because the title pun game was so strong. I'd be curious about the "cozy mystery" phenomenon since I first read an article about it a few years ago, and there's nothing that I love more than a good Agatha Christie puzzle or gratuitous descriptions of food. What I found instead was a bizarre narrational conservatism (weird asides about PC culture, and, especially unappealing, a random passage blaming sexual assault on sexy clothing and alcohol), characters that were borderline caricatures, and way more descriptions of the female protagonist's butt from the point of view of her love interest than mouthwatering descriptions of desserts. If I'm being generous, I'll blame my dislike mostly on the disconnect between what the book is and what I expected it to be, and on the fact that I am clearly not its target audience. The appeal of cozy mysteries seems to lie largely in their escapism, and this just wasn't a story I wanted to escape into.