Hm, whose priceless mirror is that in my entryway and how did it get there, and is this going to end up being my fault somehow?

That is the question that Sarah Kelling Kelling asks herself when she uses the (mostly avoided) front entry of her “summer” house on Cape Cod. She inherited this drafty old Victorian grande-dame from her husband in the previous book, where she decided that she was unhappy with her life and decided to do something about it – with grave consequences.

When you invite change into your life, it sometimes comes in with a roar. You find yourself letting go of The Old and slogging around the slushy limbo with no sign of The New in sight. Sarah’s Old was traumatic: she had to face some hard truths, let go of people she loved, let some new people in, and fight for her life.

Now she is, accompanied by one of the new people she let in (Max Bittersohn, art detective), trying to piece together a new life from the tatters left behind from the old. One of those remnants is the old house on the Cape, where she finds someone else’s priceless artifact. Recognizing the worth of the mirror, Sarah immediately hands it over to the cops on the down-low, and then begins trying to piece together a new life.

But Sarah’s old life isn’t done with her: friends and acquaintances try to draw her back into the swing of things. She goes along for the moment but comes to recognize that it’s time to let go. Especially when a murder is committed amongst the old crowd, and they immediately try to pin it on Max, for four reasons: a) he’s not one of them; b) he’s Jewish; c) he was responsible for the arrest of one of them; and d) they sense that he is about to catapult them into more change, exposing truths that are better left unsaid, and taking their Sarah away from them. Now it’s up to Sarah to get him out of jail and figure out what the heck is going on, all while fending off the octopus grip of her former life.

Hm, good thing I don’t have a job writing blurbs for the back of books* because that paragraph makes this book sound like VC Andrews or something. It’s not. It’s a cozy mystery, a little light humor, a few (mostly) bloodless murders, a bunch of silly characters, a happy ending. You know, Cozy.

Sarah is one of my favorite characters and I always enjoy these books. In this one, it seems like Sarah does nothing right according to the old crowd: she was instrumental in the arrest of one of them; she’s dating the wrong person; she’s changing established patterns that they are comfortable in; and she’s not afraid to let them see her disapproval when she dislikes their behavior. People are constantly telling her that she’s in the wrong or asking her what her problem is. She is constantly having to establish boundaries and make it clear that she stands apart now, on her own two feet.

They say that it’s helpful to read books that resonate with something that’s going on in your life, because they validate how you feel. I totally get how Sarah feels in this book: sometimes it seems like you can’t do anything right and everything that goes wrong is somehow your fault. People tell you things like, “Well, why didn’t you do something about it?” Or “Aren’t you done cleaning up that mess that I made?” Or they put you in a position where you have to do something unpleasant or complex because they don’t want to take responsibility for it, if it goes wrong. Or they step in to save the situation, when the situation didn’t need saving, because they want others to perceive that they are in charge. You’re just going through life, trying to make things a little more organized for your own sanity, and then they can’t find their keys – which you didn’t move – and somehow that becomes your problem because you don’t know where they are, and you’re expected to solve it.

And you start thinking, “I could use a cozy little murder about now.”

So, instead of reaching for an ax to solve your problems (as one of the characters in this book does), you reach for instead for The Bilbao Looking Glass.

Much better, thank you.

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^{*Although could they get much worse than they have been lately? It’s almost enough to make you never want to buy SFF again.}