About the Book

Book: Written Off
Author: Barbara Cornthwaite
Genre: Christian Cozy Mystery
Release Date: May 2021

”Break a leg?” They’ll be lucky if they don’t all break their necks!

After years of waiting, Katrina finally has her happily ever after. All is right with her world . . . until hate crimes begin happening in the charming college town of Wilkester. Even more disturbing is the fact that the perpetrator seems to be connected with the writing class Katrina teaches. How can she prevent her rosy visions of the future from turning into broken dreams?

Find out in this third book of the Wilkester Mysteries.

Click here to get your copy! Also available through Kindle Unlimited.

My Thoughts

This was my first by this author and I thought it was pretty good despite being a bit too current in today's social issues. My liking when I read a book is to escape reality not to submerge into it through fiction so in that aspect the author lost my attention but she did a great job at processing her thoughts through her book. The one thing I did appreciate a lot that I am seeing less and less with authors is the strong Christian message. God is definitely mentioned throughout the story and I was all about that. The characters are very well written and developed. Katrina especially is very keen on standing upon her beliefs and I appreciated that.

Overall I thought it was good. If you are looking for an extremely light cozy mystery then this is definitely the book for you!

My Rating: 3 Stars/Liked it.

I received a copy of this book through Celebrate Lit. I was not required to post a positive review. All views expressed are only my honest opinion.

About the Author

Barbara Cornthwaite lives in the middle of Ireland with her husband and children. She taught college English before “retiring” to do something she loves far more; her days are now filled with homeschooling her six children, trying to keep the house tidy (a losing battle), and trying to stay warm in the damp Irish climate (also a losing battle). She is surrounded by medieval castles, picturesque flocks of sheep, and ancient stone monuments. These things are unappreciated by her children, who are more impressed by traffic jams, skyscrapers, and hot weather.

More from Barbara

What Kind of Lessons Could a Mystery Possibly Teach Me?

It’s been a couple decades since I taught a college English class, and writing the Wilkester Mysteries with Professor Katrina Peters as the main character brought back happy memories of teaching. Not enough to want to go back to it—homeschooling my own kids is much more rewarding—but enough that I had to stop myself from writing much longer lectures into the stories! These are my first contemporary novels, and it was nice to write a story without the hours and hours of historical research I usually have to do. But whatever time period stories are set in, people feel the same emotions and have to learn the same spiritual lessons.

Katrina loves literature and can’t help seeing her own life as a story. The only problem is that she keeps thinking she knows what the Author is doing, and she has definite ideas about what the plot should be. She is not unlike myself: over and over I’ve thought I knew what God was doing in my life. And if He was short on ideas, I had quite a few that He was free to use! But He has rarely been doing what I thought He was, and for some reason He never seems to use my ideas about what could happen in my story. Both Katrina and I need to learn the lesson that God’s wisdom is beyond ours, His storytelling is much deeper and richer than ours, and His plots are never predictable!