The Cozy Owlet

A bookish blog for curious readers

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Welcome to The Cozy Owlet, a home for all things bookish. If you love reading (especially of the cozy mystery, snarky fantasy, and meta-fictional variety), you’re in the right place. New posts on Mondays.

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There's nothing more fun than a read that surprises you with its depth. And I have a fun one this week... 📚 ...and we're somehow here at the end of year 2! Long-time friends know that I'm a huge fan of @janice.hallett - so I've been eagerly awaiting Release Day for The Examiner, her latest epistolary novel. 📚⌨ 🎨 Not only did I tear through my review copy (thanks to @netgalley and @atriabooks for the reckless enablement), but in my eagerness to get my (gorgeous, signed, bonus content) edition from @waterstones, I may have ordered an extra copy 🙈 On the bright side - that means I get to host my first GIVEAWAY! (Details at the end of this post.) Sometimes you're looking for a comfort read. For me, that's a cozy mystery with traditional bones and the perfect amount of snark, set in a small English village, with an introverted and observant protagonist. Weirdly specific? Perhaps - but @katarinabivald's The Murders in Great Diddling somehow happens to land perfectly in the sweet spot.📚☕️ (Thanks to @netgalley and @poisonedpenpress for the gift copy!) I feel like there's a universal guilty pleasure associated with voyeurism and gossip. Humans are just naturally curious creatures, and there's something so intriguing about the idea that our neighbors and close acquaintances have hidden depths. A Curtain-Twitcher's Book of Murder, a recent UK crime novel by @gaymarrisauthor, indulges that curiosity in a series of vignettes that follow the inhabitants of a 60s suburban London street through a series of murders. 🏡☠️📖 I loved @kikahatzopoulou 's Threads that Bind last year, and was actually so excited to get a gift copy of her follow-up, Hearts that Cut, from @netgalley to review! 📚✨🧶 Last stop, Nice! Because there could be no better way to end three weeks of vacation than with a few days by pebble beaches and warm blue water 🌊🏝️ Before we get to the final stop on the European tour, I want to take a moment to appreciate trains... and the mystery stories that take place on them. 🚂🔎📚 At their best, train mysteries both celebrate travel and the serendipity of large-scale transit, while leveraging both the train and its surroundings to create an inescapable sense of atmosphere. We don't have a great rail network in the US, but I was so excited to carry a modern train mystery (they're undergoing somewhat of a revival) with me to Europe. Our next stop was Barcelona, and luckily for me, the city is the setting for a true modern classic. I'd never read The Shadow of the Wind, and I got to go a little bit outside my comfort zone and try to read something a bit more psychological / thriller-like. It's a bit of a surrealist mystery / thriller set in Francoist Spain - it's dark and vibey, something I'd normally read in the fall.

#The52BookClub2024 3 stars 3.5 stars 4 stars BIPOC authors Books about books Closed circle mystery Cozopoly 2023 Cozy mysteries Cruisin' Thru the Cozies 2023 Epistolary novels Epistolary Reading Challenge 2023 Fantasy Fantasy adventure Fantasy mystery Feminism Feminist fantasy Golden Age mysteries Historical fantasy Holiday crime reads Holiday crime stories Holiday mysteries Judge a book by its cover Literary adaptions Locked room mystery Magical adventure Magic and murder Manor house mysteries Miss Marple NetGalley Reading Challenge 2023 New reads Nonfiction Paranormal mystery Rambles Reading discovery Series intros Summer of Scandal TCO Reviews The Body in the Library The Murder at the Vicarage Train mysteries True Crime Urban fantasy Winter reads Witches