The Haunted Homecoming is the 10th Southern Ghost Hunter cozy mystery by Angie Fox. Released 16th Aug 2021, it's 296 pages and is available in paperback, audio, and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links throughout. I've really become enamored of ebooks with interactive formats lately.
This is a very lighthearted paranormal cozy with an ensemble cast of quirky characters and a protagonist who has a skunk for a pet and a dead zoot-suited gangster housemate whom she accidentally bound to her house when she unknowingly buried his ashes in the rosebushes in the garden. The book is set in the fictive town Sugarland Tennessee and is full of sweet tea, southern charm, football homecomings, monster trucks, and grits.
It's told in first person PoV and the author manages to move the narrative along without info dumping or dragging the action out. The dialogue is typical for southern cozies; full of slightly precious turns of phrase and catty swipes wrapped in good manners (bless your heart). It manages not to shade over into meanness and sniping, but it definitely bears a fair bit of southern style and vernacular.
This is definitely a niche subgenre, but fans of southern paranormal small-town cozies will find a lot to like here. Although it's the 10th book in the series, it works perfectly well as a standalone and readers coming into the series with this book won't have trouble following the action. For fans of Cleo Coyle's Haunted Bookshop cozy series, this one is much the same, without the noir aspects, and with a bonus pet skunk for charm.
Four stars.
Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.
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