Audiobook Review: A Cozy Horror

Bless Your Heart by Lindy Ryan

Read By Stephanie Nemeth-Parker

Summary from NetGalley:

Rise and shine. The Evans women have some undead to kill.

It’s 1999 in Southeast Texas and the Evans women, owners of the only funeral parlor in town, are keeping steady with…normal business. The dead die, you bury them. End of story. That’s how Ducey Evans has done it for the last eighty years, and her progeny—Lenore the experimenter and Grace, Lenore’s soft-hearted daughter, have run Evans Funeral Parlor for the last fifteen years without drama. Ever since That Godawful Mess that left two bodies in the ground and Grace raising her infant daughter Luna, alone.

But when town gossip Mina Jean Murphy’s body is brought in for a regular burial and she rises from the dead instead, it’s clear that the Strigoi—the original vampire—are back. And the Evans women are the ones who need to fight back to protect their town.

As more folks in town turn up dead and Deputy Roger Taylor begins asking way too many questions, Ducey, Lenore, Grace, and now Luna, must take up their blades and figure out who is behind the Strigoi’s return. As the saying goes, what rises up, must go back down. But as unspoken secrets and revelations spill from the past into the present, the Evans family must face that sometimes, the dead aren’t the only things you want to keep buried.

Audio ARC provided by Macmillan Audio via NetGalley for an honest review.

Confession:

This was such a delightfully fun audiobook. I enjoyed the characters, the story was captivating and the narrator did an excellent job of bringing the characters to life. This is being called a horror book, but I would say it is more of a cozy horror. There are some gruesome scenes, but they are not that horrible, and they are mercifully short.

I loved the Evans family! They are a tight knit family that has an unusual second job that fits right in with their running a funeral parlor. My two favorites of the group wer Ducey, the oldest member, and Luna, the youngest. But all of the women are given page time and they were all wonderful to hear from. I did keep confusing Lenore and Grace a little bit, especially at the beginning, but as the book went on, they did start to be more distinctive from each other. All of the Evans women are brave and tough, they have to be doing what they do, and always have each others backs, even when they are unhappy with each other. A wonderful and realistic family dynamic is shown through out the book.

There is an amazing number of secondary and tertiary characters, and some of them are narrators for short chapters of the books. Some are victims of the Strigoi, others just part of the story. I liked Deputy Roger Taylor, who has an important role in the story. But I think my favorite characters had to be Luna’s friends, Crystal and Dylan. They often provided a bit of humor when things got dark.

The story is quite riveting. I found myself wanting to find time to listen to the story because I needed to know what was going to happen next. The author does a good job with the setting, a small town in Texas in the 90s. Everyone seems to know each other and most of their secrets. There is a running thread of darkness in the story, but for the most part it is pretty light and sometimes even funny. The murders are somewhat off screen for the most part, the aftermath is sometimes fairly graphic in the descriptions, but not like in a true horror book. The only thing I would want more from is the backstory of the Strigoi. The Evan’s family has always fought them, but don’t seem to know much about them? That just felt a little off.

Stephanie Nemith-Parker does an excellent job of bringing this story to life. She does a southern accent well and managed to make each character distinct with different voices. She also does a really good job with the emotions of the characters, so you always knew how they were feeling. It is really hard for one narrator to portray so many points of view, but she made it seem easy.

This is a book I would recommend you have on your radar. It was funny, a little bit scary, and full of a lot of heart. I can’t wait to see what happens in the sequel.