Rating: 5🌈
How to review or even begin to describe absolutely magnificent heartbreakingly extraordinary narrative chaos?
Vawn Cassidy brings this incredible series to a close in a story that has a reader in gut wrenching sobs, for heartbreaking reasons and for ones that spring from immense joy. There’s scenes of such high comedy as well as low, drunken hilarity and madcap humor to go along with moments of heart stopping fright and one’s of such intense pain that you feel like you’ll break.
The relationships the author has built between the characters in this series covers so many facets of love. It’s the depth of love between a father and son, now at the end of the father’s life from a disease that’s slowly torn through his mind, losing himself and his memories. It’s the love between best friends who have been through the best and worst of times together and are still there for each other. It’s the love of found family and friends supporting each other and the bond between them. And the deep connection and romantic love that comes from being with the best person you know is the one who knows you and accepts you for who you are.
Cassidy has given the reader all of this through many characters and their relationships. We’ve come to know each of them, watch them grow and the relationships develop through story after story. Our emotions are heavily invested and, here, we are in every single moment and scene as the final chapter in this series plays out.
Did I laugh so much at a certain point that my dog left the room? Why yes, I did. And did I cry so much at a certain moment, that it brought her back into the room to check on me? Also yes.
But this is a journey that is one that ended beautifully. Even better than I had imagined.
No spoilers . And we will be seeing more of the crew in new adventures to come.
Dead Serious Case #5 Madame Vivienne (Crawshanks Guide to the Recently Departed) by Vawn Cassidy is a gorgeous book. It’s emotionally compelling and an exceptionally well written finale that’s one of the top books in my recommendations list as well as the series.
Read them in the order they were written.
Love the covers!
Crawshanks Guide to the Recently Departed:
✓ Dead Serious Case #1 Miz Dusty Le Frey #1
✓ Dead Serious Case #2 Mrs Delores Abernathy #2
✓ Dead Serious Case #3 Mr Bruce Reyes #3
✓ Dead Serious Case #4 Professor Prometheus Plume #4
✓ The Grim Adventures of Death and Chan: Vol. 1 (a Dead Serious Companion novella) – Side story
✓ Dead Serious Case #5 Madame Vivienne – series finale but not the end
Crawshanks Guide to the Occult :
◦ The Little Shop of Curiosities Cursed Object #1 – coming 2025
Buy Link:
Dead Serious Case #5 Madame Vivienne (Crawshanks Guide to the Recently Departed)
Blurb:
For one brief shining moment, the utter insanity that is Tristan Everett’s world makes sense.
He’s marrying the man he loves, has a dead drag queen for a bestie and is surrounded by an amazing found family. Okay, so his life isn’t exactly what you’d call normal. By day, he’s a quiet, mild-mannered forensic pathologist, but the rest of the time, he guides lost souls into the light. He’s also averted an apocalypse, stopped Chaos from coming through a magic door, and drunk tequila with Death.
It’s all a bit bonkers, but it’s his life… and he loves it.
He’s flying high but, like Icarus, it’s only a matter of time before he’s brought crashing down to earth with singed wings. The strange reality of his life intrudes once again when his friend, Madame Vivienne, is murdered, and it’s clear from the beginning that this is no ordinary killing.
Someone is using dark magic.
Viv’s soul has been bound, leaving her trapped and unable to communicate. Tristan, Danny, and their friends must uncover the truth and find the killer. But the deeper they delve into the old bookshop in Whitechapel, which has been in the Crawshanks family for generations, the darker and the more dangerous the secrets that begin to unravel.
And what they discover may just change their lives forever…
• Publisher: (April 3, 2024)
• Publication date: April 3, 2024
• Language: English
• Print length: 299 pages
Crawshanks Universe Novellas/ Spin offs
The Grim Adventures of Death & Chan Vol 1 (Website Exclusive)
Blue Thunder (Website Exclusive)”
Scattered Thoughts and Rogue Words 