A Critical Conjunction Review: When a Cozy Mystery Gets Uncomfortably Real

Read time: 5 minutes

📱📖 Read on Kindle 📃 About 350 pages ⏱ Duration: 5 hours
Genre: Cozy Mystery 🏷️ Publisher: Berkley (ARC by NetGalley)

Book Blurb:

When Tricia Miles’s sister Angelica announces they’re going into business together, it’s news to Tricia, but rejuvenating Stoneham Stoneware, a struggling kitchen and home goods store, feels like a win for both of them. Right after taking possession, though, they find the store trashed and the previous owner dead. Leona had sold the business to Angelica out of financial need, then tried to back out once the deal closed, souring things between them in front of witnesses. But Leona had plenty of other enemies too. Now Tricia has to solve the murder before it destroys the sisters’ new venture, and more lives along with it.

Let’s talk … murder!

I don’t know if I was in denial all these years with this series, or if this book is calling it out more strongly than before, but this is the first time in the series I am realizing how dysfunctional the Miles family is. There’s jealousy, resentment, entitlement, infantilization, a bucketload of secrecy, and just so much doormat behaviour. I don’t know if therapy is helping me see it, or if the audiobooks minimized it earlier, but now it’s just right in the open for me to see. That does make for an uncomfortable read.

Coming to the book:

There are a lot of things happening here. Angelica has a new beau, Ian and Becky are getting married, and there’s some mysterious tug of war happening in the diner that NR has recently acquired. Tricia oscillates between being the maid of honour to Becky and not being invited, so many times throughout the book. Daniel is taken for granted quite a number of times in this one. There’s a moment when he doesn’t want to go to an event but agrees, because of Tricia, and the way she talks about it to her friend: “Daniel is too loyal to me to say no.” Umm. I’m not sure that’s a positive way of talking about someone who loves you too much. This is the same woman who pays hundreds of thousands of dollars for a flower arrangement at a memorial she has no connection to, just because someone else organized it out of guilt, gave her a sob story, and told her “you can very well afford it.” Talk about a doormat.

And then the ending:

Gosh, it was so random. The reason for the murder is casually thrown into the story with no indication of it earlier. Also, I don’t even know what the Miles sisters did to solve this murder at all. They were so wrapped up in their pretty little entitled lives to do anything remotely sleuth-y.

This book did not sit well with me, for many, many reasons, and now I’m rethinking my reasons for sticking with the series. Do I really want to subject myself to so many toxic relationships?

Would I recommend it?

Twenty books in, and A Critical Conjunction is the one that finally made the Miles family dysfunction impossible to ignore for me. Between the entitlement, the doormat behaviour, and a mystery that solves itself with barely any sleuthing on Tricia’s part, this one just didn’t work. The ending especially felt tacked on, with a motive that comes out of nowhere. I’m not saying goodbye to Booktown yet, but this installment has me questioning how much longer I want to stick around for it.

⭐⭐

5 Book Recommendations:

• Joanne Fluke’s Hannah Swensen series (start with Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder)
  If sisterly tension is what got under your skin here, Hannah Swensen’s baking-themed mysteries have their own long history of sister dynamics worth watching, minus the entitlement Tricia and Angelica bring to the table.

Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | Booktrovert | OpenLibrary | Litsy

• Ellery Adams’ Books by the Bay Mystery series (start with A Killer Plot)
  Another long-running cozy series built around a small-town bookish community, this one leans more into found-family warmth than the strained dynamics of Booktown, if you want the comfort without the doormat behaviour.

Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | Booktrovert | OpenLibrary | Litsy

• Krista Davis’s Domestic Diva Mystery series (start with The Diva Runs Out of Thyme)
  Another series that leans on family and neighbourhood entanglements for its drama, but keeps the sleuthing itself front and center in a way this Booktown installment didn’t.

Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | Booktrovert | OpenLibrary | Litsy

• Laura Childs’s Tea Shop Mystery series (start with Death by Darjeeling)
  If you’re craving a cozy mystery where the amateur sleuth actually does the sleuthing, this long-running series keeps its protagonist genuinely involved in solving the case, book after book.

Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | OpenLibrary | Litsy

• Miranda James’s Cat in the Stacks Mystery series (start with Murder Past Due)
  Another bookish small-town cozy series, this one built around a much steadier, less fraught set of relationships, a nice palate cleanser after a book as tangled as this one.

Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | Booktrovert | OpenLibrary | Litsy

Am I the Only One Side-Eyeing This Family?

Twenty books into a series and suddenly seeing the dysfunction for what it is, that’s a specific kind of reading experience. Have you ever stuck with a long-running series only to realize partway through that a dynamic you’d been glossing over was actually a problem the whole time? Or have you read A Critical Conjunction yourself, did the Miles family drama land differently for you? Drop your thoughts below.

Book Links:

Want to purchase this or any of your favorite books while supporting a local bookstore? Consider purchasing using the sites below. These sites work with independent local bookstore owners to fulfill your book orders. #SupportLocal

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