A mysterious murder. An enchanted hometown. Catching the killer will take a crack reporter… and a pinch of magic.

Between her cheating husband and her on-air meltdown, Marzie Nowak is going through a bit of a bad spell and a heck of a midlife crisis. Her kids have flown the coop to college and her husband has opted to trade her in for a younger model. With nowhere else to turn, the ex-big-city journalist crawls back to her superstitious hometown of Widow’s Bay just in time for their annual pagan festival. Her new, much less glamorous gig has her reporting for a local news website. It doesn’t take long for her to realize the legends surrounding Widow’s Bay may be more practical magic than a fanciful myth.

Soon Marzie is forced to contend with an invasion of flirty furry tourists, a sun-shy billionaire, and her suddenly chatty cat’s fashion advice. When an unsolved murder sparks her own mystical powers Marzie comes face to face with the fact menopause is a real witch and so is she!

With a killer on the loose and magical mysteries around every corner, can Marzie crack the case before her next meltdown? Or hot flash? Because in Widow’s Bay a hot flash means your magic is just getting warmed up!

Titles in the Widow’s Bay series include – Resting Witch Face – Coven Mitt – Late Bloomers – Wands Have More Fun – Curse Strings – Intermittent Casting – Spell Like Hotcakes – The Crone Age –

Title:  Resting Witch Face
Series:  Widow’s Bay #1
Author:  Rebecca Regnier
Paranormal Genre:  Paranormal Cozy Mystery & Paranormal Women’s Fiction
Publication Date:  July 19, 2018
My Rating:  4 stars

Resting Witch Face, the first story in the Widow’s Bay series is a bit Paranormal Cozy Mystery and a touch of Paranormal Women’s Fiction.  I was browsing for my next read (totally ignoring the tons on my e-reader) and clicked on the latest book in this series – and being the series junkie that I am, went back to the beginning only to discover that I had purchased it a while ago.  This is good and bad.  Good that I already have it, and bad that it’s sat there waiting for me to read it for… well, far too long.  So with apologies to the book but goodness this was well worth the wait.  And now I’m officially hooked on finishing the series (or at least getting caught up).

I saw Resting Witch Face as the world-building introduction to the Widow’s Bay series in many ways.  I may change my mind as I dive further into the series, but I really felt that I was getting to know Marzie’s back story, how she got to this place in life – totally not where she expected to be, that’s for certain.  Also, because with the new-ish genre of Paranormal Women’s Fiction immerging since this was originally published, it does seem to fit in that genre a bit better.

Marzie and her husband were co-anchors on a news show.  That day she had no thoughts beyond what headlines would be on the show… right up until she caught her husband and a sweet young thing in an extremely compromising position (talk about getting caught with your pants down!).  Her very public meltdown had immediate results in more ways than she’d expected.  Oh, she wasn’t surprised at being fired, angry but not really surprised, it was the other things that she questioned and then lost sight of in dealing with the resulting chaos.  Marzie left her big-city home, set a divorce from the scum husband into motion, and while not admitting it to herself, headed back to her roots, her mental tail definitely trailing behind her to her home in the small, tiny town of Widow’s Bay where not everything is explainable.

While now reporting for a local news website, Marzie isn’t as lost back home as she thought she’d be.  There were childhood friends to get caught up with, her aunt to spend far more time talking about “taking over” than Marzie really understood, and the changes to her hometown that brought back all those rumors, those under stirring thoughts of her youth.  Widow’s Bay really was a paranormal town, and she’s experiencing some magical abilities that she knew she didn’t have when she left years ago.  Now all she has to do is track down a murderer thanks to her first news assignment, and figure out this magical stuff… easy peasy, not.

I enjoyed Resting Witch Face.  Yes, there were some small issues with an obsession with some things, but I can see that leveling out as we move on in the series.  Overall, I enjoyed getting to understand Marzie, travel with her as she faces some really unexpected changes in her life, and perhaps even more importantly, as she comes to own those changes, makes them uniquely her own over time.  I’m looking forward to seeing where Marzie’s journey takes her… and thanks to coming late to this series, I can easily binge-read to get caught up.

If you like to mix genres a bit in a story with a touch of PCM and PWF, then you’ll feel right at home with the Widow’s Bay series.

I own a Kindle edition of this title.

Available for the Kindle