Category: Purrfect Reading Challenge

The Tuesday Night Survivors’ Club (A Survivors’ Book Club)
Cozy Mystery
1st in Series
Setting – Arizona
Lyrical Underground (June 14, 2022)
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 175 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1516111141
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1516111145
Kindle ASIN ‏ : ‎ B09GL6K4J5

The New York Times bestselling author of the Tourist Trap mysteries launches a new series perfect for fans of The Thursday Murder Club. New-age Sedona, Arizona seemed like the perfect place to open up a bookstore devoted to healing. But when a member of a local cancer survivor support book club goes missing, will this group’s sleuthing skills be enough to find her?

Two things got Rarity Cole through her breast cancer treatments: friends and books. Now cancer-free, Rarity is devoting her life to helping others find their way through the maze to healing. She’s opened a bookstore focusing on the power of healing—Eastern medicine, Western medicine, the healing power of food, the power of meditation, and the importance of developing a support community. To that end, she’s also started the Tuesday Night Survivors book club. With its openness to new-age communities, Sedona, Arizona, is the perfect fit for Rarity’s bookstore and the tightly knit group.

But their therapeutic unity is disrupted when one of their members suddenly goes missing. Martha has always kept to herself, never opening up much of her personal life to the group. Now she’s nowhere to be found. With her car abandoned on a trail and her dog left with a friend, Rarity is sure something terrible had happened—but will she be able to uncover Martha’s secrets before it’s too late?

Dollycas’s Thoughts

Breast Cancer survivor Rarity Cole has moved to Sedona, Arizona, and opened a bookstore but her real mission is to support survivors of breast cancer and the after-effects. Friends and books are what got her through her treatments so soon after opening she set up the Tuesday Night Survivor’s Book Club. After a slow start, the group grew to include several women in different stages in their cancer journeys.

Martha seemed like a reluctant member of the group only attending one meeting. But then the group is shocked to find out the woman is missing and has left her dog, Killer, behind. Rarity quickly decides to foster the dog until Martha is found. The Tuesday Night group soon adds Sleuther’s to their name when they just can’t help themselves from doing their own investigation. Soon they have notebooks with lists and are setting up a murder board all in their efforts to find out what happened to Martha and why?

Will they be able to pull together to solve the case or will they find themselves in peril when they question the wrong person or push someone too far? Time will tell . . .

Being diagnosed with Breast Cancer at the start of the pandemic was really hard. While I had a great team of doctors, nurses, technicians, and counselors and a lot of support from my family, in-person support groups were shut down really quick. Groups that were already formed did their best with emails and Zoom meetings but none were accepting new members. I tried several online options but just couldn’t find the right fit but I got through it so maybe support groups just weren’t for me.

As soon as I started reading this book I realized The Tuesday Night Survivor’s Club would have been perfect for me now. Like Rarity, I find solace in books and after my diagnosis, I ordered a bunch of books to learn about what I was facing but after you get through your treatments you need something different. Rarity selected some great books for her group. She chose fiction books, cozy mysteries, women’s fiction, and books where women struggled with other things besides cancer. Books that would open up great discussions. I hope in future books she includes a list of the books.

Rarity Cole is an excellent protagonist I identified with her right away. I loved that she took in Martha’s dog. She has a great friend in Sam Aarons. Sam convinced Rarity to come to Sedona and she pushes and pulls Rarity is such a supportive way. Through Sam Rarity meets Archer Ender. He runs Enders Tours and leads several hikes in the area. We also meet Drew Anderson of the Sedona Police Department. He comes into the picture when Martha goes missing but his parents are also in town and playing matchmaker. They think Sam is perfect for their son. And of course, the members of the book club, Shirley, Holly, Malia, Kim, and Martha who goes missing. All Ms. Cahoon’s characters are well crafted for this first book in the series. We get to know them well enough to get invested in their lives but she has left plenty of room for growth.

The mystery was very well-plotted with serious and humorous happenings as the amateur sleuths do their best to figure out who killed Martha. Sedona is a place open to a lot of places offering “new age” or “alternative healing” cures so that part of the story was very interesting. I did have a couple of suspects firmly at the top of my list but wavered a bit as the story continued. I was happy to say I pulled myself back in line to hone in on the right person before all was revealed.

What really captured me about this story was that the author drew from her own cancer journey. Because of that, I felt like a kindred spirit especially when she stated in her dedication that a nurse gave her a bag of cozy mysteries to read during her cancer treatments and that “made all the difference”. Cozy mysteries have always been my favorites so I always made sure my Kindle was fully charged before each chemo treatment. In fact, I know I read more than one book by Lynn Cahoon during my cancer journey.

We are now both survivors but like most survivors that fear of cancer returning is always there. That is why for me escaping into a good book is so important and The Tuesday Night Survivor’s Club was a Perfect Escape. A real-life issue teamed up with an excellent mystery. I am excited to see when the author takes these characters next.

Your Escape Into A Good Book Travel Agent

ABOUT LYNN CAHOON

New York Times and USA Today best-selling author, Lynn Cahoon is an Idaho native. If you’d visit the town where she grew up, you’d understand why her mysteries and romance novels focus around the depth and experience of small-town life. Currently, she’s living in a small historic town on the banks of the Mississippi river where her imagination tends to wander. She lives with her husband and two fur babies.

Author Links

Goodreads – Twitter –Facebook –Website –Amazon Author Page

Also by Lynn Cahoon

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check out Lynn’s Amazon Pages here.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. Receiving a complimentary copy in no way reflected my review of this book. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”