coziesandromance 's review for:

Real Murders by Charlaine Harris

4.0

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I've really enjoyed the movie adaptations of this series and loved the True Blood books so I figured it's finally time to dive into this OG mystery series that is sort of a pre-cursor to cozies, Aurora Teagarden. Not quite as campy as True Blood but still as much of a page turner, I thought this introduction to Lawrenceton and the Real Murders club was a good read and that it still held up for the most part. These books were written in the early 90s, so it was kind of fun to read a mystery where the main character had to get to a landline to make a call and had to research with books and library databases instead of Google. I also thought it was funny that the entire town thinks the members of Real Murders are insane for discussing murders in basically a book club when nowadays true crime as a hobby is sort of expected. I was a little surprised how much grislier and dark the book is than the movie, especially with the cheerful cover, but I thought that set the stakes for Aurora to find the killer much higher.

This series is fun, a little dated, but still enjoyable, and a definite page-turner. Will keep reading and comparing the books to the movies!