Review: A Curious Woman

A Curious Woman by Jess Lea
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Finished on April 15, 2021

Favorite Scene/Quote: "Really, Bess, you do make yourself an easy target. Why didn't you just write them out a confession in triplicate?"

This was an interesting book. I honestly don’t read many “cozy mystery” books as it’s tagged so I wasn’t too sure what to expect out of it. In that regard, it was better than I imagined.
    
Bess works for an eclectic museum/gallery where she helps her boss procure items that fit the curious theme that they have going on. She’s quite good at her job but she can’t seem to get one item from a particularly stubborn individual who happens to own the other museum in town. That’s not a main focus of the story but it is how she meets Margaret. Margaret is a very serious, and intimidating, woman with a lot of rumors behind her. She doesn’t want to spend time around Bess but when a murder occurs and the two are questioned, they decide to work together to prove that neither of them were there at the time.

I quite enjoyed the mystery element of this book. It involved a lot of players and I felt like there was a lot of doubts and suspicion, but I quite enjoyed how it ended. I will admit that I didn’t expect the culprit to be who it was, and I don’t know if I’m an outlier in that regard.

The characters were a bit harder to get behind. The mains weren’t bad necessarily, they just took some time to get used to them. I really liked Margaret even when she was at her most intimidating and I found that Bess was a bit harder for me to like. She just seemed a bit too perky, at times pushy, and other attributes that I personally don’t enjoy. Both characters also had a history where you could understand why the two of them were they way they were. It made sense.

The other characters in the town were pretty much annoying or suspects. Deirdre was probably the only side character that didn’t annoy me in some way. Oh, and the chickens. The chickens and the Hags are cool.

This isn’t a deep book that requires a lot of focus to understand. It’s weird with a cast of just plain odd characters, but it’s amusing. It’s worth a read if you’ve got access to a copy and time to spare.