Journalist Cat Conway is looking forward to an easy assignment covering a major wellness and self-actualization summit at the Pinerock Resort, featuring Bliss Bondar and Bree Guthrie, creators of the Welcome, Goddess empire and widows with attitude. Cat’s mother, Marian Conway, bestselling author and defiantly mediocre parent, is on the agenda—and so is murder.
When one of the influencers turns up dead, suspicion falls on the high-profile guests. Could the killer be a jealous business partner? Or the Instagram-famous poet? The academic who takes vicious aim at the wellness movement? The empowerment guru whose wife hates him? Or Cat’s mother, who has a reputation to protect and a shocking secret to hide?
Cat’s pulled into investigating another celebrity death, but this time while struggling with the possible demise of her livelihood: The Quill & Packet is struggling financially, and may be headed toward its final edition. A convoy of protesters, angry at Cat’s reporting, has besieged the Quill’s newsroom. Can Cat rescue her mother and her newspaper, or will the killer stalking Port Ellis beat her to the deadline?

IN A NUTSHELL
A big improvement on the first book. It has a stronger plot with more interesting characters. Seeing Cat’s relationship with her formidable mother brought her character to life. The subtextual and sometimes explicit critique of the ‘Wellness’ industry and the anti-science cults spreading misinformation on social media gave the book an edgier, more contemporary feel. 

‘Widows And Orphans‘ (2025) is the second book in a new cosy mystery series about Cat Conway, a former Toronto TV journalist who, after a divorce and an on-air incident, has restarted her life working for the Quill and Packet, a print newspaper in a small provincial town in Canada. The first book ‘Bury The Lead’(2024) was an entertaining mystery about a murder in the local theatre. It handled some #MeToo themes quite well and kept my interest in finding out who the killer was but the character of Cat Conway felt a little flat to me. Even so, I pre-ordered the second book ‘Widows And Orphans’ and I’m glad I did. It seemed to me that Kate Hilton and Elizabeth Renzetti got into their stride with this book. The pacing was tighter, the plot was more complicated and the people were fascinating and credible. 

This time, I got inside Cat Conway’s head and started to understand her. The story is set at a Wellness conference run by two young widows whose podcast on surviving grief has a huge following. Cat’s mother, a celebrity best known for her book on female leadership, is a speaker at the conference. The dynamic between Cat and her mother was fascinating to watch. 

I enjoyed how Hilton and Renzetti wove a critique of the ‘Wellness’ industry, the spread of disinformation, and the anti-science cults into the mystery. Their observations were penetrating, topical, credible and fully integrated into the mystery. I also liked how they played with the widows and orphans theme to display the different ways that family members deal with conflict and tragedy. The mystery stayed cosy in the sense that there was no directly observed blood and gore but this isn’t a story that happens in a bubble of niceness and safety. The setting and themes are firmly rooted in the real world and the story is stronger as a consequence.

My wife and I listened to this on a couple of long drives that weren’t quite long enough to finish the book so when we arrived home, we listened for another hour or so to see how everything worked out.

I’ll be back for book three whenever it comes out. 

I recommend the audiobook version of ‘Widows And Orphans‘. Click on the YouTube link below to hear a sample of Marnye Young’s narration.