Wags and Wrongdoings is Book 7 in the Paw Paw’s Pet Bakery cozy mystery series, the heartwarming small-town cozy mystery series Michigan readers have come to love. If you’ve been following Tillie Moore from her first day in Sweet Haven, you already know she has a knack for stumbling into trouble, and a fierce loyalty to the friends and animals who love her right back.
This time, Tillie is taking her three best girlfriends on a January getaway to Silver Sands, a sleepy Gulf Coast town in Florida. Six weeks ago, her dear friend Georgina lost her husband, and Tillie is determined to give Georgina a week of sunshine, sand, and the kind of laugh-until-your-cheeks-hurt fun that only the four of them together can produce.
That plan goes sideways the very first morning when Jim Hargrove, the warmhearted tiki bar owner who adopted them the night before, is found dead behind his own bar. The local detective is calling it a robbery. Tillie isn’t buying it. Jim was still wearing his expensive silver watch, and Tillie is the only one who notices.
What follows is a clean cozy mystery with strong female friendships, the kind of warmhearted feel-good ensemble that makes this series the cozy mystery with animal sidekicks that readers cannot stop recommending. Tillie’s pets are back home in Sweet Haven. Daisy the St. Bernard, Beans the mini pig, Mr. Cuddles the Cane Corso, and Logan the cat all stay behind with a house-sitter, and they still get plenty of page time through her daily updates, which are exactly as ridiculous as you would hope. Beans steals a throw pillow. Logan knocks a mug off the counter. On purpose.
Sweet Haven, the fictional Lake Michigan town that anchors this cozy mystery series Michigan readers have made into a household name, gets a brief vacation in this book, but it’s never far from Tillie’s mind. The action moves to a small Gulf Coast town where Tillie has to navigate a grieving daughter, a rattled bartender, an estranged business partner, and a quiet local widow whose homemade shrimp and grits hides more than she’s saying.
Sheriff Ben Donovan, the slow-burn romance who has been steady at Tillie’s side since Book 1, plays a smaller but pivotal role in this installment. He’s back in Sweet Haven, fielding her phone calls at midnight, helping her think through the case from a distance, and showing up on her porch at the end of the trip in the first snow of January. For readers following the romance arc, this is a quiet but deeply satisfying chapter for Tillie and Ben.
If you enjoy books like Joanne Fluke, Leslie Meier, or Krista Davis, you’ll feel right at home with the Paw Paw’s Pet Bakery cozy mystery series. The amateur sleuth small town mystery formula is here in full force: a community of suspects, a Tillie-driven investigation built on listening more than questioning, a satisfying solve that comes together over coffee and pastries with her friends, and a warmhearted resolution that earns its closing line.
This is also a cozy mystery fresh start in the truest sense, not for Tillie this time but for Georgina, who finds something resembling herself again on a Florida beach with a six-dollar sketchbook in her hands. The four-woman friend group at the heart of this series has never felt more real or more necessary.
Each book in the Paw Paw’s Pet Bakery cozy mystery series is a complete standalone mystery with no cliffhangers, but readers tell us they fall in love with these characters and want to read every book in order. Wags and Wrongdoings can be enjoyed on its own, but if you’re new to the series, starting with Book 1, Biscuits and Bedlam, will give you the full experience of watching Tillie build her bakery, her friendships, and her new life from the ground up.
Settle in with a cup of coffee, a peanut butter biscuit for the dog, and a long Florida sunset. Wags and Wrongdoings is the cozy mystery you’ve been waiting for.
