The most recommended mystery romance books

I enjoyed the sassy main character, Pepper, who suddenly acquires the ability to interact with the dead. The first book in a series, her current project, an entertaining mafia don, tasks her to solve his thirty-year-old murder. His persistence made me chuckle at his refusal to leave until Pepper helped him. While struggling with life in general, mainly rich girl turned pauper, she finds herself in sticky situations. Her job as a cemetery tour guide adds its own comedy to the story.

A bravura performance by a brilliant author with total control of her writing skills and an exhaustive mastery of literary traditions, which she deploys with the panache of Horowitz playing Chopin.

Oates has written a neo-Gothic novel filled with demonic manifestations and overwhelming passions that take place against the background of American society (and Princeton University) with all its salient characteristics and problems in the first decade of the 20th century. 

The novel is also, and not incidentally, filled with wonderful, three-dimensional portraits of major American cultural and political figures of the time—Woodrow Wilson, Upton Sinclair, Mark Twain, Teddy Roosevelt, Jack London, and others. Oates’ emotional range is marvelous, and she can communicate the feelings and psychic churnings of a stiff Calvinist on a pulpit as readily as those of a tremulous young woman in a rose garden.

A funny, eerie, assured, and extraordinarily entertaining work.

Devious might bit a bit heavy-handed with the religious references, but it makes sense given its location and the types of murders occurring in this book.

I enjoyed how the author worked those references into the overall mystery with not just the location, but the clues and other discoveries along the way. There also is a big twist behind the true killer in this book that I really enjoyed reading, too.

I wish I could explain it in more detail, but that would give away major spoilers! 

I’m not usually a fan of mysteries with paranormal elements, but the first Lady Adelaide mystery, Nobody’s Sweetheart Now, has just a touch of it—a debonair ghost, Lady Adelaide’s dead husband, who drops into her life when she’s hosting a weekend house party. I love a mystery set at a county house party, so I was predisposed to enjoy this book because of the setting, but the repartee between Rupert, who was a philanderer and needs to do a good deed to pass over to the other side, and Lady Adelaide added a new angle to the typical manor house mystery that had me smiling throughout the book.

If you’ve ever wondered what it would be like if all the iconic fairy tale characters were friends and lived in the modern world, then this is the novel for you. Kill Me Softly is the ultimate fairy tale mashup, with heroes and heroines—and of course, villains—from Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Beauty and the Beast, and countless others, all living in one enchanted town where magic comes in two forms: blessings and curses. The reader follows a teenage orphan as she gradually comes to understand what it means to have the mark that brands her as an inevitable victim, though her stubborn determination to change her fate and go against the norm is a welcoming variation. With a plot chock-full of intrigue, love triangles, and dark twists, this YA novel is sure to charm.   

Next, we have a true standout in YA—a novel that arguably revolutionized the mystery genre for teen readers.

While mysteries have long been a staple in YA literature, in my view, this book sparked a new age. This novel, now adapted into a popular Netflix series, firmly established YA mystery as a force to be reckoned with, largely thanks to its clever twist.

Taut, scandalous, and enthralling, this book exemplifies the blame game genre.

This book wasn’t released until December 2023, but lucky me, I read it early because I hosted a library event with the author, so it counts as a September 2023 read for me.

The Last Caretaker vibrates with suspense and emotion. It takes the reader along on a woman’s journey as she not only establishes her place in the world but discovers that she can handle whatever is thrown at her, even when it’s a stranger arriving at her door in the middle of the night with a terrifying story.

Hold onto your seat, you won’t be able to turn the pages fast enough. I gulped down this book in a couple of sittings, rooting for the heroine the entire time. Gripping and emotional, The Last Caretaker pulls you in and doesn’t let go.

The Haunting of Maddy Clare is a historic tale of ghost hunters who find exactly what they are seeking in Maddy Clare—a powerful and angry specter that haunts the barn where she ended her life. The characters are well drawn in a story that offers just the right balance of fright and romantic tension. The atmosphere is as dark and unsettling as one would hope to discover in a story about a haunting spirit, with enough mystery and suspense to keep the reader wondering about the ending for each of the characters—including Maddy Clare herself.

For readers who enjoy mysteries, ghost stories, and romantic suspense…The Haunting of Maddy Clare offers all of that and more.

Evie O’Neill has been sent to live with her Uncle Will when she can’t obey the conventional rules of her hometown. The good news is that he lives in glitzy New York City during the 1920s, but Will runs a very different scene, operating the Museum of American Folklore, Superstition, and the Occult. After a girl’s body is discovered with clues indicating that the murder was motivated by the occult, Evie, her uncle, and a few new friends find themselves involved in the investigation. A Young Adult book, what I particularly love about this novel, is the way Evie evolves from a thoughtless party-girl to a young detective who embraces the psychic gift she has long kept at bay. In the process, she becomes wiser about the larger, complicated world around her.  

This book is laugh-out-loud funny. The rich socialite heroine is quite intelligent in some things and ridiculously stupid in others. The whole book is absolutely unbelievable, but utterly delightful – and way beyond society's terms of approval for women in 1907 Los Angeles. Sometimes a book doesn’t have to be anything but a joy to read. This one delivers.