The Busybody Book Club

Nova Davies has relocated from London to a remote Cornish seaside town, in part to be with her fiancé, whom she is set to marry in a little more than a week. While Nova loves her job as a social worker in the local community center, she can’t help but be a bit frustrated by her clients. Must the five members of her book group—a real bunch of misfits if there ever was one—argue about everything? But that’s just the beginning of a series of misfortunes, all of which seem to point to Nova. First one of their own, a book group participant, disappears, only to have a dead body show up in his house. Then a significant sum of money, earmarked to repair the community center’s ancient roof, goes missing—could Nova really have been so dizzy that she forgot to lock up the building? There’s a lot of fun to be had here, from Phyllis, an Agatha Christie superfan who insists on using Christie’s plots to solve the murder and find the funds, to Nora, whose life couldn’t become more complicated thanks to a full-on control freak of a mother-in-law and a mom who’s stranded in South America, likely to miss her wedding. And the fiancé? Please dump him. A delight from start to finish, and sure to please cozy readers who appreciate strong characters, a great community setting, and a dollop of criminal activity. For readers who enjoy Lucy Gilmore and Emily Henry.