Board to Death is the first book in a shopfront cozy by CJ Connor. Released 22nd Aug 2023 by Kensington, it's 240 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 and references throughout.
This is an engaging start to a shopfront cozy mystery. These series are often set in food or book related businesses: pizza parlors, bakeries, coffee shops, cheese shops, bookstores, libraries, antiquarian shops, and all the other hundreds of variations in the subgenre. This one, refreshingly, is populated by offbeat, nerdy, and appealing characters who populate an old-school board game shop outside of Salt Lake City.
The characterizations are well rendered and appealing, many of them academics or allied fields, and full of appealingly offbeat book and games lovers. It would have been so easy to fill the book with lampoonable table flipping aggressive neck-bearded stereotypes and the author has (happily) managed to avoid all the "easy shots".
The mystery itself is competently constructed, with a satisfying denouement and resolution. The second volume in the series is foreshadowed but no definite publishing schedule info is currently available.
There are LGBTQIA+ characters central to the story and they're treated respectfully and sensitively, and happily the entire story does *not* turn on that one facet. The author/publisher have also included discussion questions for book-club or reader discussion.
Four stars. Quite well written and enjoyable cozy. It would be a good choice for public library acquisition, book club discussion, and possibly a buddy read.
Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.
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