When Willow Brown was seven, she had her first vision. Her death played out like a movie. Her second vision came along shortly after that, when she predicted her father’s cancer diagnosis. 

Her mother always wanted her to hide her gift away. That’s what she called it, a gift. 
It was never a gift. 

In one of Willow’s more recent visions, she saw her great aunt dying peacefully. What she couldn’t predicate was that Aunt Cora would leave her a house in Florida and a cat, forcing Willow to go back to her hometown to sort out affairs. 

But it turns out Aunt Cora is a little less dead than anyone thought. The old psychic inhabits the body and mind of the cat – and she’s hellbent on teaching Willow how to properly use her psychic gifts.

When Willow’s childhood best friend is murdered, she has no choice but to get involved, putting her on a collision course with the vision she’s been running away from all her life.

‘The Scrying Game‘ exceeded my expectations. I’d expected a short, light, cozy mystery with a dash of the supernatural that would keep my wife and me entertained during the course of a long drive. I mean, a woman returns to a small town after inheriting a large old house from an aunt she hasn’t spoken to in years and then discovers that it’s inhabited by a talking cat – we all know how those stories go. If they’re well done, they’re as comforting and as unsurprising as watching an episode of ‘Murder She Wrote‘.

Well, ‘The Scrying Game’ was a comfort read, fitting neatly into the Cozy Supernatural Mystery sub-genre, but there was more to it than I expected. 

Firstly, Willow Brown is not the typical Cozy Mystery main character. She’s a cop, and she’s good at her job. She has some psychic abilities, but they’re not only involuntary, they’re unwanted. She sees the visions that she gets as blighting her life. She’s struggling to keep her marriage alive, and the last thing she wants is to return to her hometown.

Secondly, the mystery at the heart of the plot is a good one. I liked that Willow got a long way to solving it without any supernatural aid. Riding out who did what and why kept the book moving forward and held my attention.

Thirdly, the supernatural elements work. There’s no infordumping and no lazy reliance on tropes. The supernatural elements are presented through Willow’s perception of what’s happening to her, and she brings all her cop scepticism to evaluating that experience. This made it easier to accept the supernatural parts as real and as integral to the action. This was good because some of the action of the plot relies heavily on Willow’s abilities.

This was a satisfying read. I look forward to reading the next book in the series as soon as it becomes available as an audiobook.

I recommend the audiobook. Janina Edwards did a good job in bringing all those Floridian voices to life. Click on the YouTube link below to hear a sample.

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Christine Zane Thomas is the pen name of a husband and wife duo. A shared love of mystery and sleuths spurred the creation of their own mysterious writer alter-ego.

They can be found in northwest Florida with their two children, their dachshund (Queenie), schnauzer (Tinker Bell), and a cat (Snowball) who just showed up one day and claimed them.

While not writing, their love of food takes them all around the south.

Christine’s series include Witching Hour, about a newly forty-year-old witch named Constance Campbell. Her other series are The Food File Mysteries starring Allison “Allie” Treadwell and Comics and Coffee Case Files starring Kirby Jackson and his beloved dachshund, Gambit.