Jay to the World by Donna Andrews

Release Date: October 13, 2026

Rating: 5 stars

The Meg Langslow series is a must read for cozy mystery fans! I'm not generally one to binge read a series but when I started this series I was reading them 4, 5, 6 at a time before switching over to read something else. Even then I was only trying to delay getting caught up so I wouldn't run out of Megs to read.

Here's what I like in a cozy series:

-- Lovable main character who does something interesting as a career (check, Meg is darling and she's a blacksmith!)

-- Inner circle with interesting characters (Meg's family: dad is an adoptee who became a doctor and eventually finds his birth parents, mom is a tyrant really but no one notices because she's basically the queen, brother is a former lawyer turned game designer, sister is not really in the picture for some reason, extended family- so so many extended family members Meg always has someone to turn to no matter what she needs)

-- Unique setting but Mayberry-esque in that almost everyone is sweet as pie (Caerphilly is Utopia basically, everyone there - except the suspects of course - is kind and caring and they all take care of one another)

--Cool residence for the MC (Meg and Michael found a huge old house in the country and they live there with their twin sons and Meg's cousin Rose Noir and her nephew Kevin and whoever happens to be in town at the moment, it has a huge kitchen and a well-stocked library, and plenty of room for a thousand Christmas trees)

-- Appealing love interest (check! Michael is gorgeous and kind of famous and when Meg meets him she thinks he's gay so she just befriends him without fawning over him and because of that [and because she's awesome] he falls in love with her, no love triangles, no drama, just a happy couple)

--Great mysteries (check, check, and check!)

Andrews is kind of famous for her Christmas mysteries. About every other book in this series is a Christmas themed mystery. This one surrounds the holiday show home (which if I'm not mistaken we've seen in other Christmas books in this series too).

In Jay to the World all the relatives have descended on Meg's home and her parent's farm next door and they all get in on the festivities. Everyone is helping to fix Brynne's playhouse, which was destroyed by someone who may also have tried to kill Meg's mother (I don't think we know her name, she's just Mother), they're also trying to help Mother recreate decorations for the show home after the hundreds of angels she ordered were stolen and destroyed by another show home decorator. Meanwhile, in a situation reminiscent of baby Jesus, Mother and the local women's shelter are trying to help a pregnant woman named Thea escape her abusive husband and start a new life.

There is always SO MUCH going on in these books, I have no idea how Andrews has managed to do so much with her characters without ever repeating the same situations. Most authors lose steam after a while and the stories lose something, but Andrews has kept this series fresh and exciting for 40 books. The series has evolved a lot, the characters have grown and changed and we've met new characters to keep things fresh.

If you haven't read this series, you really should. You won't be disappointed!

Thank you to Donna Andrews, Minotaur Books, and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC!