Dead & Breakfast

Dead & Breakfast by Kat Hillis & Rosiee Thor, 336 pages

Married vampires Arthur and Sal have just welcomed their first guest at their new B&B in a small vacation town in Oregon. While there are a few other paranormal business owners in Trident Falls, there's also a fairly wide stripe of anti-paranormal sentiment in town, so when the mayor turns up dead in Arthur and Sal's flower bed, they're desperate to find the killer — and they're hoping against hope that it's not someone paranormal. With the help of an elfin coroner and a werewolf barista/lawyer, as well as the new city manager (human), Arthur and Sal are on the case.

This was a cozy mystery with a fantastic paranormal twist. I loved the straitlaced/flamboyant pairing of Arthur and Sal, especially as their relationship grows and matures over the course of the book. This definitely isn't something to read if you're looking for something challenging or super serious, but it's an excellent frothy and fun escape.

The Throwback List

The Throwback List by Lily Anderson (2021) 391 pages

Jo handles social media for her Silicon Valley employer until she's laid off when the company is acquired by another company. The 26-year-old reluctantly returns home to Sandy Point, a tiny town in Oregon, where she'd hoped to never have to return when she left for college. In Sandy Point, her old best friend, Autumn, has long ago cooled to her because Jo didn't work at maintaining the friendship. Jo's parents' next door neighbor Bianca (another high school classmate of Jo's) is newly married, managing her family's tattoo parlor, and looking out for her aging grandmother. Bianca has never been happy with Jo, but has been best friends with Autumn for a while now, ever since they found each other at the same college.

Jo finds an old list in her childhood bedroom that she and Autumn had composed back in high school, which contains a range of activities that Jo wanted to achieve before going away to college. The list was mostly unfulfilled. Jo makes it her mission to work on the list now while she applies for jobs. The first item she completes upon her return to Sandy Point is to TP the tree at Bianca's house, much to over-worked Bianca's dismay.

As the characters awkwardly reconnect, I found myself starting to root for all the main characters, maybe even more so for Bianca than Jo. It was a fun read.