Thanks to Atria for this copy.

I’m admittedly a huge fan of cozy mystery series and this is the first book that I’ve read from Jess Kidd. I’ve heard great things about her writing and her plot building so I was excited to dive into this. However, I was left feeling ‘meh’ about this. 

Cozy mysteries usually have a quirkiness to them with some eccentric characters and a memorable town. Murder at Gulls Nest follows Nora Breen, a nun who has left the order in order to find a missing former novice. Nora arrives at Gulls Nest, which is the boarding house where Frieda was last seen and quickly meets the other boarders. The synopsis described them as lively, but I found them quite boring and one dimensional. 

As the book starts, there are more deaths to be investigated and everyone thinks Nora is a busy body old woman. The boarding house and town were kind of just background instead of making them a huge player in the book and I found that the plot didn’t move very fast. 

I was hoping this would give me vibes of Thursday Murder Club or Killers of a Certain Age, but it left me wondering what to pair it with. 

It’s missing the furry side kick and memorable towns of other cozies, but missing the deeper mysteries of a regular mystery.