Five Furry Familiars

This is the 5th in the Kitchen Witch Mysteries. I received it as an ARC from NetGalley and this is my honest review. Thank you to NetGalley, the author Lynn Cahoon and the publisher.

It's the first one I have read in this series and I enjoyed it. It's about Mia Malone who runs Mia's Morsels and her roommate Christina. Mia has one familiar already and suddenly 3 more familiar kittens show up on her doorstep and then her boyfriend Trent also ends up with a Maltese hellhound, making 5.

As if that wasn't enough craziness, Mia is trying to work on her business as well as a catering director job at a ski resort, take magic lessons from her grandmother and solve a murder where her roommate is one of the suspects. It's a wild ride in the town of Magic Springs and all you can do is hang on and enjoy it.

I have a love-hate relationship with the Kitchen Witch Mysteries series.  I love this paranormal world that Lynn Cahoon has set in a small-town in Idaho.  I love Mia and her friends and family.  I love the magical aspect of this series.  But I always seem to come away from the books in this series a little disappointed by the mystery.  And as I finished Five Furry Familiars, I had that same sense of wanting more.

Now don't get me wrong, I love getting to know Mia better as she's trying to figure out her magical abilities.  And her friends and family are a hoot and totally band together to solve the mystery, since a couple of their number are suspects.  But at the same time, so much time is spent detailing their day to day lives with a little sleuthing thrown in.  And then we get to the last chapter and all of the sudden there's a little overview of how the mystery was solved and the motive and I've just left shaking my head.  

I enjoyed the book and will continue to read this series because I find it fun.  But I keep hoping that the author will beef up the mystery a little while keeping the charm of the characters and setting.