Bingeable series: Lily Bard

The last couple of years I’ve reread some Charlaine Harris around Halloween, and this year it was the turn of Lily Bard, which is closer to Aurora Teagarden in feel than Sookie Stackhouse, but still has a similar feel in a way.

Lily Bard lives in the small town of Shakespeare in Arkansas. She moved to the town to escape a traumatic event in her past and has built herself a small, protected life as a cleaning lady whilst also honing her martial arts skills at the local gym. In the first book she sees a body being dumped near her house and after anonymously tipping off the police tries hard to stay out of it – until people start to suspect that she is the killer. And off we go for a five book series where Lily unravels a series of murders in her small town.

In some ways these are like other cozy crime novels: small town, female heroine who runs her own business etc, except that Lily’s life has been darker and more traumatic than most usual cozy heroines and her world view is pretty dark and cynical. The first time I read this series, I read them out of order and had a bit of a mixed response. But this time, reading them in order I could watch Lily develop and grow as she slowly breaks down the walls she has built around herself and starts living life rather than just existing. And yes I’ve hedged around what happened to her – because it’s a spoiler, it’s not in the blurbs, but it’s sexual violence and it’s bad. So be warned.

A few of the reviews of the books have some issues with the way that Lily views other women and her attitudes towards them, whereas if you read them in order, I interpreted it as it Lily knowing that she wasn’t doing anything wrong when she was attacked and so she can’t see why anyone would be so trusting as to let themselves be vulnerable. But these are definitely darker murder mysteries than Aurora, there’s a lot less sex than Sookie, which I guess makes them Harper Connolly but without the ability to see deadbodies – and there are people that have problems with that series too so maybe it is pretty apt!

Anyway, I bought the Kindle omnibus edition this time because I didn’t have them all in paperback to start with and I’m not sure I still have any of them any more (I couldn’t find them anyway) even if I wasn’t mostly binging through them while staying away from home. Kobo only seems to have the individual books. I’m not sure how easy they are to find in the shops atm – Charlaine Harris is a bit of a weird one on that front. They’ve definitely had a cover redesign since I last read them.

Have a great weekend!