C. M. Waggoner

IN A NUTSHELL
This wasn't the cosy scooby-doo meets 'Murder She Wrote' that the cover and the title led me to expect.
It was clever, complex and focused not on a demon-hunting society but on Sherry's struggle to find out why so many people in her small town are murdered and why she, the village librarian, is always the one who works out who killed them.
Sherry was well-drawn and relatable. Her friends were fun. The demons were a little disappointing,
The mysteries were entertaining. I loved show more the central conceit of the story. The ending was satisfying but for me, the pacing in the middle of the book was a little slow.

Sometimes, when I'm reading cosy mysteries, I'm aware that part of what makes them cosy is that people are nicer than I am. Sherry Pinkwhistle, the librarian at the heart of this story, wasn't nicer than me. She was someone I could relate to and believe in. She's more like Jane Marple than Jessica Fletcher. Her thoughts about herself at the start of the book made me smile and want to know her better:

"she could watch someone crying or laughing or rocking back and forth in a corner and feel curiosity instead of either suspicion or sympathy."

"She spent so much time pretending to be a nice old lady from a book that her actual, somewhat strange and ghoulish personality tended to take her by surprise."

The first 40% of the book carried me along quite happily. I was enjoying Sherry and I was amused by her misfit gang of allies. As I watched Sherry solve a murder, it was obvious that something bigger was going on. The mystery worked but the murder felt... staged. That was intriguing but not entirely satisfying. I knew this was a cozy supernatural mystery but I had expected a little more tension. This had all the threat of playing a game of Cluedo

Sherry's first unambiguous encounter with the supernatural was underwhelming. Instead of cranking up the tension and moving the story forward, it felt like an arms-length experience and it slowed everything down. I couldn't see the point of having two demons: a minion demon who presents as Lord Thomas Cromwell (Why? What does he have to do with a small town in upstate New York?) and the big bad that he's working for who doesn't manifest until much later The Lord Thomas Cromwell demon didn't work for me. He wasn't interesting and he kept the supernatural threat at a distance.

The action in the middle of the book was slow. The Village Library Demon-hunting Society members barely featured in the story. The focus was on Sherry, who was being plagued by a demon and her own guilt. At that point in the story I wasn't being pulled along by the plot but by Sherry's dry wit.

As I entered the last third of the book, the plot started to take on a new and surprising shape but there still wasn't much tension. The demon element gave the murder investigations an odd spin - making them more abstract - the puzzle being not who killed whom and why but figuring out what the demon got out of it.

Then, in the last fifth of the book, everything came together very quickly and in quite a satisfying way. The big bad was front and centre. Sherry had finally worked out what was going on (but not what to do about it), the plot came into focus and the threat level finally rose. I liked that the ending was clever and that it moved Sherry forward personally. show less

Fantasy starring a gutter firewitch who’s a bit too fond of gin. In an attempt to make the rent, she joins a crew of witches protecting a fine young lady before her marriage, one of whom is a respectable clanner who might be a great meal ticket for her. But things get complicated, both murderously and romantically, and she has to somehow infiltrate a drugmaking operation and make the very stuff that her mother is addicted to, in hopes of being able to save those she loves (and some she’s show more not so fond of). It’s a lot of fun, and includes a skeletal mouse named Buttons who is both cuter and more horrifying than he sounds like. show less

What a pleasant surprise! I adore a cozy murder mystery, and was fully prepared for this book to continue in that vain. The twist was effective and engaging. I loved the tone and the protagonist was very relatable. The twist and the tone together throw refreshing, humanizing, and funny wrench into the genre format. I have one critique, which is a spoiler: once the twist is revealed our protagonist and her society start doing things differently. Waggoner pumps the breaks on the whole show more investigation plot and the characters start addressing the larger problem. While we do jump back to that larger problem at the end of the book, the third quarter or so of it returns too completely toward the investigation alone. I understand that the protagonist is submitting to the inevitability of her circumstance, and there are plenty of fun "demon problems" to break up the investigation scenes, but I feel like our demon hunting society does...very little demon hunting and sort of disappears during a large chunk of the book after their formation. Besides that I was absolutely smitten. Waggoner's choices with the demon were witty. I deeply appreciated the perspective she gave the spirit. It makes me curious about Waggoner's extracurriculars honestly. Looking forward to reading more of Waggoner's books! show less

A wonderfully written romance novel set in a world where people can do magic. When I picked this up, I was thinking its going to be a typical Victorian story with magic. And it started that way, but it quickly became something else completely. It also manages to comment on class, education, love, and social roles, all without being over the top and being written in a heist type story. The story was fun, went places that I wasn't expecting, and it manages to take a stereotype and turn it 90 show more degrees to make it something else. I especially liked the way the romance was written. It wasn't hot and steamy, but was written in a way that manages to be both be sexy, and wholesome. show less