Tracey Lee Writes

Do you have plans for Valentine’s Day? No? Great! Ellie Alexander’s novel ‘A Victim at Valentine’s’ is the perfect substitute: low on romance and big on sleuthing fun.

If, like the story’s protagonist, Annie, books are your love language, this will be a perfect pairing.

A Victim at Valentine’s is the fifth book in the A Secret Bookcase Mysteries series. I didn’t know that when I started reading, but it wasn’t a problem. Ellie effortlessly weaves in summaries from past novels without losing the thread of the story.

In this latest addition to the series, we meet Annie in every cozy mystery reader’s dream bookshop, The Secret Bookcase. The shop serves as the venue for a dating event—one I would 100% love to attend. However, Annie is sidetracked from her day job when a murder occurs right on her doorstep (literally).

Our budding detective faces a multitude of suspects, including a chaotic psychic, a professional matchmaker, and a rival bookseller. Further complications arise as clues emerge from the titular murder in her past.

Annie must put her Valentine’s Day plans with the scrumptious Liam on hold to assist her former teacher and lead detective in solving the murder.

Ellen Quay does a fantastic job of narrating this novel. I could have spent the entire day and night in a bath, listening to her voice. She embodies Annie, and while her Jamaican accent could use a little fine-tuning, she keeps the listener entirely engaged in the story.

Ellie Alexander’s writing style is witty, engaging, and well-paced, filled with delightful twists and turns that keep you hooked. Her nods to Agatha Christie and other cozy mystery classics are abundant. Despite the murders, I’d love to live in a town like Redwood Grove.

I adore the characters; each is unique and leaps off the page. One of my favourite lines is, “I was being held hostage by a murder of crows.” I’m honestly living for the crows who become Annie’s unlikely allies.

This novel is cozy mystery perfection, and I highly recommend it to all armchair sleuths.

Warning: There are a few spoilers for earlier novels in the series, which is to be expected. It’s perfectly enjoyable to read ‘A Victim at Valentines’ as a standalone, but I wouldn’t recommend it. I felt a fair bit of FOMO and had to resist the temptation to stop and go back to the earlier books. My takeaway is that it’s worth investing in Ellie’s novels, so start at the start of the series.