Death by Bubble Tea (LA Night Market #1) by Jennifer J. Chow

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single woman in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a book."

Yale Yee discovers her cousin Celine is visiting from Hong Kong, she is roped into playing tour guide, even though she hasn't seen her in twenty years. Her restaurant owner/chef father goes one step further and thinks it would be a good idea for them to run a food stall together at the Eastwood Village Night Market. Feeling that she's been left with no other option, Yale agrees even though she hasn't cooked in years, but with the help of Celine's social media career it might be worth a shot. They spend the night serving drinks in a catchy design and small food dishes and are shocked when their one drink is a favorite amongst the crowd. Unfortunately, this drink is also found beside the body of a dead patron, and Celine and Yale are the main suspects. Even as opposites, Celine and Yale work together to prove their innocence and to get to the bottom of this crime.

This book was such a delightful cozy mystery with lovely cultural aspects thrown in that it immediately makes you fall in love with the characters. The community building and the character growth in the book was incredible. Yale and Celine made the perfect buddy cop duo, and they actually get results from their amateur sleuthing. Even when everything they suggest to the lead detective sounds straight out of a law-and-order episode, it seems to work! Throughout the story it feels like Yale and Celine become more like sisters than cousins, and that they realize they are stronger together then apart. I'd go as far as to say that their individual trauma was similar and that it helped them forge such a strong bond. Just a quick shout out to the food and the recipes included, absolutely everything made my mouth water. I enjoyed that the characters were mainly female and that it was a female led story, but that all of the characters were extremely fleshed out. I look forward to reading the next in the series. Truly it was just full of fun banter, love, friendship, and powerful badass women.

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The Necromancer's Library (Ellie Jordan, Ghost Trapper #12) by J.L Bryan

"We all have our little gardens of dead dreams, don't we? And sometimes we still try to water and tend those gardens, long after we should know nothing will ever grow there." In this installment of the Ellie Jordan, Ghost Trapper series, the team is sent to investigate a potential haunting at an antebellum mansion in the middle of the countryside. A pair of sisters currently reside there because the previous owner, a deceased reclusive professor, hired someone to transform his massive collection into some semblance of organization. The oldest sister Cherise is a university student who is cataloguing the entire collection. The issue is, it's a collection of ancient and medieval manuscripts and items. The library and mansion are filled with terribly haunting spirits-both helpful, lost, and frightening. Even when exploring the grounds they come across an eerie family cemetery in the overgrown woods and run into a figure trying to communicate something seriou...

The Sanatorium (Detective Elin Warner #1) by Sarah Pearse

"Grief is like a series of bombs exploding, one after another. Every house, a new detonation. Shock after shock after shock." Le Sommet is a horrible place, surrounded by local legends and rumors, the once abandoned tuberculosis sanatorium has found its second life as a five-star hotel. It is as imposing as it is beautiful, and being high up in the Swiss Alps makes it a remote get away. It's also the last place Elin Warner wants to be stuck, having taken a leave of absence from her work as a detective, decides to brave the journey. Especially when her estranged brother and his fiancée reach out and invite her to celebrate their engagement. She arranges in the middle of a terrible storm with her boyfriend, already on edge when they wake the following morning to discover her brothers fiancée has gone missing. Elin is thrust into the case when everyone gets stormed in and the police aren't able to access the hotel, making the guests panic even...

Ellie Jordan, Ghost Trapper by J.L Bryan (Ellie Jordan, Ghost Trapper #1)

""You don't understand, Mercy," I said. "You're dead, you died--" A howling shriek hit me right in the brain. The ghost charged me, her misty face distorted and distending as she put on speed, her empty eye sockets and mouth hole stretching to inhumane shapes." Set in Savannah, Georgia, Ellie Jordan's job is anything but normal. Her job is to catch and remove unwanted ghosts, but also act as a private detective. Delving into the past of the family, house, property, and even items inside the home. Ellie surveys every family that contacts her to see if there is a true haunting. In this story Ellie surveys a family that contacted her to deal with a restless presence in their historical mansion that is undergoing construction. Ellie is joined by her unwanted coworkers- Stacey and Jacob, a psychic. The team manages to get one ghost out of the house, the one that was targeting the young daughter, only to discover there were many many more dang...

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