Cozy Sunday

Cozy Sunday is an original weekly meme to celebrate great cozy mysteries!

I went through a period of time in my life where I didn’t read anything but cozy mysteries for roughly 3 months. During that time, I read a whole lot of good books (and a few bad ones) but I absolutely fell in love with TAGGED FOR DEATH by Sherry Harris.

Starting your life over at age thirty-eight isn’t easy, but that’s what Sarah Winston finds herself facing when her husband CJ runs off with a 19-year-old temptress named Tiffany. Sarah’s self-prescribed therapy happily involves hitting all the garage and tag sales in and around her small town of Ellington, Massachusetts. If only she could turn her love for bargain hunting into a full-time career.

One man’s junk is another man’s treasure

But after returning from a particularly successful day searching for yard sale treasures, Sarah finds a grisly surprise in one of her bags: a freshly bloodied shirt…that undoubtedly belongs to her ex, CJ, who now happens to be Ellington’s chief of police. If that’s not bad enough, it seems Tiffany has gone missing. Now it’s up to Sarah to prove that her cold-hearted ex is not a cold-blooded killer…

But finding that treasure can be murder.

Probably the best advice I can give to anyone who wants to read cozies is this: find a main character who has an interest in something you love.

The Sarah Winston mystery series provides that for me. Sarah is an avid yard sale junkie who is trying to start her own business of organizing sales for other people. I’ve talked about this in my review for SAVANNAH BLUES, but I absolutely love yard sales, junking, and antique shopping. I blame my pack rat Mom and Grandma for that. I was invested in Sarah’s story even without the murder aspect because I wanted to know what kind of deals she was going to find!

Cozy mysteries always have some weird love triangles going on but I really enjoyed Sarah’s evolving relationship with her ex, CJ, and how things progress and regress and progress as the series moves forward.

This was such a great series and I recommend it anyone who loves a little murder, a little love, and a whole of yard sales!