rpweber15's reviews
260 reviews

I’m not really a cozy book person, mostly because they are so surface-level. This one stayed pretty true to that but the writing is excellent, the characters are incredibly endearing, and I’m a coffee lover so all the descriptions about the food and drinks in the cafe really tickled my fancy. The “threats” in the book are interesting but not flushed out enough for me. I think the author signed a 2-book deal so I’ll definitely plan to read the next one!

I've seen this marketed as Knives Out but make it queer. Well, it didn't quite deliver that. It's definitely queer, which I very much enjoyed. The whodunit part of the book, however, is not particularly compelling and is very anticlimactic; Knives Out had a far more nuanced and clever plot. What was far more interesting in this book is the found family, especially in the context of 1950s America where the LGBTQIA+ community is ostracized, attacked, hated, etc. What's incredibly heartbreaking is that the world we live in today, 70 years later, is not that much different from the world in the book. I really think the whodunit plot of the book distracted the author and the reader from the real gems between the pages (the characters). I genuinely liked almost all of the characters and would have far preferred reading a character driven book about each of them and their found family, even if there was little plot. I enjoyed the book, but it was very surface level. I think I saw that the detective in the book (Andy) will be coming back in a future book(s). I'll read the next one in hopes that the author focuses more on his characters than the convenient plot devices that aren't needed in order to tell a great story.