Cozy Mystery Book Reviews

Book Reviews for Cozy Mysteries Released in 2025

All of the books shown below are stand-alone crime fiction novels, the first book in a new cozy series, or part of a critically acclaimed cozy mystery series.

New reviews are always being added, so check back frequently. Scroll down to see book reviews for 2024 cozy mysteries. See books currently under review.

When the recently widowed Ginny Cole retired to the small English village of Little Shaw, she expected a quiet life. Instead, she found a body in the library, a clever stray cat named Edgar, and a group of sleuthing widows.

Review of The Widows’ Guide to Murder

Things come apart at the seams when Shelby Phillips reluctantly takes over her mother’s needlepoint shop, gets entangled in a murder investigation, and comes face to face with a crafty killer.

Review of One Sharp Stitch

Emma painstakingly planned everything for the grand opening of her new wellness spa in Carmel-by-the-Sea. The only thing she didn’t plan on was becoming the number one suspect in the murder of a rival spa owner.

Review of Essence of Foul Play

With Halloween approaching, gemologist and seer Shay Myers is busy brewing witchy teas and coming up with a plan to win a decorating contest. But when she sees dark visions in her tea leaves, she decides to mix in.

Review of A Spirited Blend

When Josiah Reynolds attends a sledding party in the Bluegrass world of oak-cured bourbon, antebellum mansions, and Thoroughbred horse farms, she ends up investigating the death of a retiree who shows up dead at his own party.

Review of Death By Trauma

Sheriff Kenni Lowry thought she had her hands full planning her wedding and dealing with her pushy Mama. Then a local judge gets murdered, and a baffling case ensues.

Review of Thick As Thieves

The annual fall Timber Festival has come to Pine Bluff, but the fun is cut short when amateur senior sleuth Dawna finds a lumberjack with an axe buried in his chest.

Review of Axe Me No Questions

Remi and her best friend just went all in on game-themed donut shop. When a dead man with dice is found outside their building, they get drawn into a dangerous game and face the ultimate challenge.

Review of Death in the Dice

When treasure hunters come to Fredericksburg in search of a rare Edgar Allen Poe poetry book, Liv has a dark premonition and goes head to head with a formidable foe named The Falcon.

Review of Flashes of a Dying Hour

When her friend Lucien is accused of poisoning a dinner guest, veterinarian Rylie Sunderland investigates with the help of the victim’s handsome and charming son.

Review of Vengeance in the Vines

When art expert Savanna Shepherd moves back home to Carson on Lake Michigan, she and her two sisters get entangled in a murder mystery involving forged artwork and a mysterious death.

Review of Death By Deception

Siobhán is studying for her Detective Sargeant exams and working with her husband to solve a puzzling mystery at Kilbane’s Top Garden Contest.

Review of Murder In An Irish Garden

When a professor falls to his death on the Clarion University campus and an innocent student is blamed for the crime, mystery writer and educator Jennifer (Jen) Dalton and a few of her colleagues launch their own investigation.

Review of Schooled in Murder

When Mary, a local woman, is terrorized by bizarre threats and a supposed curse, antique store owner Bella Winter gets pulled into a murky mystery. The more Bella investigates, the stranger the puzzle becomes.

Review of The Antique Store Detective and the May Day Murder

Trouble brews when Roxy’s glamorous modeling friend Vanessa comes to town. Roxy mixes in, stirs up all the steamy secrets, and solves a twisty mystery while serving up the best coffee in town.

Review of Steamed Secrets

When crochet enthusiast Annie Sara Hart inherits a yarn shop in small town Indiana, she finds interesting locals and an intriguing mystery she can’t seem to ignore. Annie fixes up the yarn shop and starts poking around to see what she can learn.

Review of Death Among the Stitches

When Lou, a New Orleans ghost tour guide who can see ghosts, comes under suspicion for the murder of a rival tour guide, she must use her powers and the help of her ghostly friends to solve the mystery.

Review of Haunting and Homicide

When a bird-loving naturalist falls into a ravine during the annual Buckeye Trail Town Festival, garden center manager Molly Green gets tangled in the investigation. The more secrets she digs up, the more the mystery grows.

Review of Secrets, Songbirds, and Succulents

Reviews for Cozy Mysteries Released in 2024

When sixty-something Dawna Carpenter finds a body and a framing hammer in her hometown hardware bathroom, she pairs up with her adult daughter and sets out to nail a killer.

Review of Hammers and Homicide

Dee Stern is tired of writing sitcoms, so she buys a retro motel on the edge of the California wilderness. When her first guest involuntarily "checks out," Dee and her pal Jeff start sleuthing.

Review of A Very Woodsy Murder

Bella Winter owns Vintage Winter, an antique store in a charming little town in the Shropshire Hills. When she finds the body of a treasure hunter who was murdered while digging something up in the dark, Bella does some digging of her own and uncovers a hoard of secrets and suspects.

Review of The Antique Store Detective

Berit Gardner is on deadline and struggling to write, so she heads to a rundown Cornwall village with more intrigue than she could ever make up. When a man mysteriously dies in a library explosion, Berit searches for answers and uncovers surprising secrets in Great Diddling.

Review of The Murders in Great Diddling

Single mom Kate Buckley races to Shamrock, Massachusetts after receiving an urgent message from her sister Colleen. When she arrives, she finds a murdered Irish step dancer and gets drawn into the investigation to protect her sister, who may or may not have had a hand in the dancer’s death.  

Review of The Jig Is Up

Joanne Fluke’s Lake Eden Cookbook: Hannah Swensen’s Recipes from the Cookie Jar features an enormous collection of recipes. This compilation includes never-before-seen recipes and title recipes from the first 29 books in the Hannah Swensen Mystery series.

Review of Lake Eden Cookbook

Ally McKinley is a retired television researcher who owns a malthouse turned guesthouse in the Scottish Highlands. When her first guest ends up dead, Ally gets the locals, including an earl at a nearby castle, to spill the tea. She discovers that the dead American tourist had a big secret and more than one enemy.

Review of Murder in the Scottish Highlands

Tony Gillingham stops by a lively party at a quintessential English country house to visit his pal Bill Beverly. The two friends end up investigating a mystery when someone is shot and their eccentric host disappears. This Golden Age mystery (written by Winnie the Pooh author A.A. Milne) is set in the 1920s.

Review of The Red House Mystery

Two friends, Angela Benbow and Caledonia Wingate, convince two other reluctant pals to help them solve a mystery. The four amateur sleuths are determined to discover what happened to their fellow retirement community resident, Sweetie, who met an unfortunate end. As they investigate, they learn explosive secrets about their fellow residents and themselves.

Review of The J. Alfred Prufrock Murders

Allie Catt is a caterer, personal chef, and literature buff in a North Carolina mountain community. She creates custom dinner parties for book lovers based on classic literature, such as Pride and Prejudice, Rebecca, and The Great Gatsby. When a friend gets accused of murder, Allie channels her favorite fictional detectives and cooks up a plan to solve a mystery.

Review of Murder on the Page

Miss Marigold Manners has the poise and style of a well-bred young woman from a wealthy Boston family. Unfortunately, she has a poor person's bank account. When she gets an invitation from a mysterious long-lost relative, she heads to Great Misery Island off the coast of Salem, Massachusetts. She finds strange people with plenty of secrets. Murder, malice, and mayhem ensue.

Review of Misery Hates Company

Ricki, the owner of a vintage cookbook and kitchenware store in the Bon Vee Culinary House Museum in New Orleans, is assisting the museum staff in planning a haunted house tour for Halloween. When a dead body unexpectedly turns their prop tomb into a real one, Ricki embarks on a thrilling investigation, unearthing more than a few buried secrets.

Review of French Quarter Fright Night

Cheesemonger Willa Bauer and the staff of her cheese shop, Curds & Whey, are in neighboring Yarrow Glenn to participate in the fall Dairy Days festival! The festival has lots of dairy-themed activities, including butter sculptures, goat races, cheese wheel relays, and a Miss Dairy pageant. But good times are not to brie. A Miss Dairy contestant is found under a pile of milk jugs, and Willa is forced to find out who wanted the princess out of the whey.

Review of Fondue or Die

Bailey Briggs is an aspiring graphic novelist and the manager of the Lazy Bones Books in the Halloween-themed town of Elyan Hollow, Oregon. Bailey is confronted with two puzzling mysteries while coordinating the town’s Spooky Season Literary Festival.

Review of Chaos at the Lazy Bones Bookshop

Roxi Carlucci, a part-time private investigator in Fresno, has a new mystery to solve when a killer writes an ending for one of the authors attending the first-ever Tower Halloween Mysteryfest. It’s up to Roxi and her P.I. cousin Stephen to figure out whodunnit before Mysteryfest can become murderfest.

Review of One of You

Emily Dalle is a lifestyle blogger who stumbles upon the body of a talk show host nicknamed the Queen of Mean. Emily crowdsources clues by reaching out to her online audience. Before they can help her solve the mystery, she gets a message from the murderer who tells her to back off...or else.

Review of Instagoner

Photographer Bobbie Brooks goes from witness to suspect when she finds the body of a fellow photographer under the local covered bridge. Now it’s up to her and the rest of the Keep It Snappy Shutter Club to capture enough clues to catch a killer.

Review of Caught on Camera

Lindsey Bakewell is hosting a tea party at her iconic lighthouse bakeshop for special guest star Vivi Lemonberry, a celebrity chef looking to reboot her career. When a scandal sours the event, Lindsey goes from baking to sleuthing.

Review of Murder at the Lemonberry Tea

Bailey King, an Amish Candy shop owner and star of an Amish Sweets television show, has perfected a gingerbread man recipe just in time for a Candy Land themed Christmas on the village square in Harvest, Ohio. When one of her Amish friends is murdered, Bailey vows to solve the crime and sifts through the clues with her sweet sheriff fiancé.

Review of Gingerbread Danger

Jessica Fletcher is spending Christmas in Cabot Cove! The whole Cabot Cove community is pitching in to plan holiday festivities in hopes of becoming Maine’s number one Christmas town. When the wife of a Boston tycoon ends up dead, it's up to Jessica to figure out who's been naughty and nice.

Review of Murder, She Wrote: A Killer Christmas

Reporter Violet Rhinehammer is celebrating a magical Christmas in the small, charming town of Holiday Junction when she stumbles across a twisty holiday mystery involving a stolen ornament design. She’ll have to dig through a snow pile of secrets to figure out whodunnit.

Review of Holly Homicide

Journalist Maddie Marlow is stranded at the Merry Monarch Pub in the Yorkshire Dales because of a Christmas Eve blizzard. As the pub guests participate in a scavenger hunt, the power goes out, and someone gets murdered. Now the survivors need to figure out which one of them is a cold killer.

Review of The Christmas Eve Murders

Cozy mystery writer Maggie Chase and thriller writer Ethan Wyatt write books for the same publisher. She can't stand his perfectly chiseled face, and he can't seem to remember her name. They accept an invitation to spend Christmas at a famous mystery author’s estate. But then their mysterious host disappears from a locked room and a body turns up, leaving Maggie and Wyatt with two mysteries to solve. There’s a good chance they’ll kill each other. Or kiss each other. Or both.

Review of The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year

Mae West is hitting the slopes and solving mysteries when the Southeast Olympic ski trials come to Normal, Kentucky. With backup from her Laundry Ladies Club, Mae plans on finding out exactly who took the pro skier out of the competition.

Review of Snowcaps, Skiing, & Sabotage

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