Kristin's Bookshelf

Homemaker
📚 Series: Prairie Nightingale, Book 1
✍️ By Ruthie Knox & Annie Mare
🎧 Narrated by Mia Hutchinson-Shaw
⭐⭐⭐⭐✨ 4.5

This book had everything I look for in a cozy mystery: an amateur sleuth, a little romance, a touch of feminism, plenty of red herrings… oh, and a dead body.

I absolutely adored Prairie Nightingale. A commune kid turned wife and mom, then ex-wife and homemaker. And I don’t just mean someone who stays home… I mean a professional homemaker. She’s got business cards, and I was immediately invested. 😂

The story felt incredibly timely as it explored MLM drama, misogynistic men, corrupt business owners, the aftermath of sexual assault (though it’s never explicitly described), and the everyday chaos of mom life.

Prairie is wonderfully flawed. She doesn’t always get it right as a friend or a mother, but she’s constantly trying to grow, make amends, and become a better version of herself. I also loved her daughters, her best friend, and her mother. They made the world feel so full and lived in. ❤️

Both the mystery and the romance are slow burns, but for a first book in a series, I thought the character development was well worth the slower pace.

And that ending? 🫢 It delivered one of my favorite murder mystery resolutions I’ve read in a long time.

💛 To my fellow cozy mystery lovers: definitely add this one to your TBR!