Is cozy mystery the horror genre's estranged cousin, or am I just looking for darkness in places it doesn't belong?
I was shelving returns at the library - we'd gotten a flood of cookbooks and light mysteries back, that post-holiday purge energy - when I decided to give this one a spin. Twenty-eight books into a series is either impressive longevity or a sign that something should've ended gracefully a decade ago. I genuinely wasn't sure which I'd find.
The Comfort Food Problem
Here's the thing about cozy mysteries: they're not trying to be horror. They're not trying to unsettle you. They're the literary equivalent of a warm blanket and a cup of chamomile tea. And that's fine! But when you've trained your brain to expect dread around every corner, a fishing tournament murder feels almost... quaint?
Sonny Bowman, our victim, is a pompous TV fishing host who gets offed on his boat. The suspect list is shorter than a grocery receipt, and the motive? So transparent I could've solved it before Hannah Swensen finished her first batch of caramel pecan rolls. One reviewer said they almost threw the book across the room when the killer's motivation became clear. I get it. There's no puzzle here - just a connect-the-dots where someone's already drawn the lines for you.
The pacing drags. We spend chapters - literal hours of audio - on Hannah's personal life drama, recipe descriptions that read like someone's trying to hit a word count, and small-town Minnesota pleasantries. If you're here for the mystery, you'll be waiting. And waiting. And waiting some more.
Suzanne Toren Does What She Can
I'll give credit where it's due: Toren is a professional. She's narrated hundreds of audiobooks, and her delivery is competent. Steady. Reliable. But "competent" isn't the same as "memorable." There's no moment where her voice work elevates the material - no character voice that made me sit up and pay attention, no emotional beat that hit harder because of how she delivered it.
For a cozy mystery, this is probably fine. You're not listening for vocal pyrotechnics. You're listening for pleasant background noise while you fold laundry or commute through traffic. And Toren delivers exactly that: pleasant, inoffensive, forgettable. I found myself zoning out during recipe sections (there are over a dozen, apparently a series hallmark) and snapping back when dialogue resumed.
Lake Eden Loyalists vs. Everyone Else
If you've read the previous twenty-seven Hannah Swensen books, you already know if you're buying this. You're here for Hannah, for her cat Moishe (admittedly, I respect any mystery series that features a beloved cat), for the recipes, for the Lake Eden community drama. You're not here for a challenging whodunit. You're here because these characters feel like friends, and you want to check in on them.
And honestly? That's valid. Not every book needs to be genre-defining. Sometimes you want comfort food.
But if you're new to the series? Skip this one. Start at the beginning or don't start at all. Entry point twenty-eight is not the move. The filler-to-substance ratio is rough, and you won't have the character investment to carry you through the slower sections. Horror fans who wandered over here looking for something different? Keep wandering. This isn't your darkness. The murder happens off-page, the investigation is surface-level, and the stakes feel nonexistent.
The Shirley Jackson Test (She Fails It)
I have this personal metric for mysteries - does the reveal make you rethink everything that came before? Does the killer's identity recontextualize earlier scenes in a way that rewards close attention? Shirley Jackson could do this in her sleep. The best mysteries make you want to immediately re-listen. The Circular Staircase had that effect on me—despite its age, the reveal actually earned a second listen.
This... doesn't. The killer is introduced late. The motive is telegraphed. The resolution feels obligatory rather than earned. Even Deception Point, which has its own pacing issues, at least tried to surprise me. It's mystery as formula, not mystery as craft.
My cat Shirley (yes, named after Jackson, yes, I'm that person) wandered over during the climax and seemed more interested in knocking my phone off the nightstand than in the big reveal. Fair assessment, honestly.
File Under: Library Borrow, Not Credit Spend
Look, I'm not the target audience here. I know that. I listen to audiobooks in the dark hoping to be unsettled. This is the opposite energy - bright, cheerful, recipe-laden, and about as threatening as a Hallmark movie.
For longtime series fans, this is probably fine. Better than average for the series, some reviewers say, which either speaks well of this book or poorly of recent entries. The recipes are there. The cat is there. The small-town charm is intact.
But at nearly eight hours, with pacing issues and a mystery that barely qualifies as one? I can't recommend spending a credit on this unless you're already invested. Stream it from your library. Listen while doing something else. Don't expect it to demand your attention - because it won't.
Finally, a mystery that respects... well, not the genre. But definitely the recipe card tradition.
