Read time: 4 minutes
🎧 Listened in audio | 📢 Narrated by Sarah Nichols
⏱ Duration: 6 hours | Genre: Cozy Mystery
🏷️ Publisher: Blackstone Publishing, Crooked Lane Books
Book Blurb:
A Catskills resort’s production of Romeo and Juliet turns deadly when leading lady Lauren Richmond is poisoned, then stabbed. Nearly everyone at the theater had a reason to want her gone. At the center of it all is Charlotte Fairfax, formerly costume mistress for the Royal Shakespeare Company, now stitching costumes for a small upstate production. Between fittings, she’s picked up more than she ever expected to know about Lauren’s rise and fall. Curiosity killed the cat, and it might just kill the costume designer too.
Let’s talk about the book:
There’s cozy murder. Then there’s cozy mystery, that gets so cozy you fall asleep in the middle of the story. This one did not work for me. It was slow, the clichés were too clichéd, and the main character just did not vibe. A fashion designing intern with no concept of basics. A play costume designer, dating the local cop, doesn’t trust her boyfriend to solve the murder. She steals evidence from him, and goes about solving a murder by herself. It’s not like she had any prior experience solving a crime. And her own boyfriend is the literal cop who’s investigating this murder. If you don’t trust him, why are you with him, lady?
Yeah, it was all just way too over the top.
The narration was good, and the ending does wrap everything up neatly, but is that really sufficient to make for a good book? I say not.
Would I recommend it?
If you like your cozies genuinely cozy and a little sleepy, this one might work better for you than it did for me. For me, the pacing dragged and the heroine’s choices made zero sense given who she’s dating. A good narrator and a tidy ending can only carry a book so far when the character logic falls apart at the center of the plot. I’d pass on this one.
⭐⭐
5 Book Recommendations
1. A Disguise to Die For by Diane Vallere
If Charlotte Fairfax’s costume-shop setting was the one part of Untimely Death you enjoyed, you should try the book that actually leans into it. Margo Tamblyn runs her family’s costume shop and gets pulled into a murder investigation with a lot more energy and a lot less hand-wringing.
Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | OpenLibrary | Litsy
2. Assault with a Deadly Glue Gun by Lois Winston
Want an amateur sleuth with sharper instincts and a lot more wit? Crafts editor Anastasia Pollack gets tangled up in a magazine-office murder, and she actually earns her sleuthing instead of just stumbling into it.
Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | Booktrovert | OpenLibrary | Litsy
3. Peachy Scream by Anna Gerard
For readers who wanted more Shakespeare-festival chaos and less padding, this one delivers a brisk, well-paced murder wrapped around a small-town Shakespeare troupe, with none of the slow patches.
Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | Booktrovert | OpenLibrary
4. Murder in the Queen’s Wardrobe by Kathy Lynn Emerson
If the costuming and Elizabethan theater angle intrigued you more than the murder plot did, this one goes further back in time, with a heroine actually working undercover in Queen Elizabeth’s own wardrobe.
Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | Booktrovert | OpenLibrary | Litsy
5. Ghosts & Gowns by Lucinda Race
Another costume-shop heroine with a cop love interest, but here the relationship dynamic actually has some fun tension to it, ghost included, instead of the trust issues that bothered me in Untimely Death.
Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | Booktrovert
So, would you trust your detective boyfriend?
Let’s hear it: if your own partner was investigating a murder, would you sit back and let them do their job, or would you be tempted to snoop around yourself? And has a “cozy” mystery ever actually put you to sleep? Drop your thoughts in the comments.
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
Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org
Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | Booktrovert | OpenLibrary | Litsy
Check out more books from Blackstone Publishing, Crooked Lane Books
