By Elizabeth Cunningham

Okay, this book is wild; I’m not even sure how to write this review. My uncle gave it to my mom for Christmas as a joke since my mom absolutely loves yard, garage and estate sales. None of us knew anything about it but it sounded like a charming cozy at a church bazaar full of small-town eccentrics, so I pretty quickly snagged it from her.

It is a murder mystery, though it takes 100 pages for the murder to happen (after a sneak peek prologue). The main investigator is a somewhat overlooked single older woman, though she is oddly… fae? There is a fair amount of woo-woo overall in the book, both vaguely witchy and strongly Christian. I didn’t actually think much of all the prayers and scriptures at first, since it all takes place at a church of course, until God starts answering back, and then I realized, oh, this is Christian-Christian.

I did some half-hearted research into the author, and I’m still not sure quite how to classify her or this novel, actually. She writes in her bio that she is descended from nine generations of Episcopal priests, and her most well-known series appears to be a Mary Magdallen/Jesus fanfic? That said, she really doesn’t seem to be overtly proselytizing.

In fact, most of the characters are struggling with their faith and falling well short of basic standards of morality (not just the murderer). We know this because the book rotates through multiple points of view from a whole slew of unhappy congregants, all with hidden hatreds and fears. Honestly, I really should have hated this book (I hated at least half the characters) but I was just agog.

I caught on to the identity of the murderer fairly early in the book, but even that didn’t diminish my interest. This book was so overall strange to me that I wasn’t sure if they were going to solve the case through human means, divine intervention, or at all. I’m pleased to report that it ends as bonkers as it began, and has a sequel that sounds like it stretches genre definitions even further. I’ll probably end up reading it out of sheer morbid curiosity, but I’m catching up on The Thursday Murder Club next.