Before Janna Rollins’s debut cozy mystery An Escape Goat: A Zen Goat Mystery begins, Callie Haybeck, a young woman living in Seattle, has never quite lived up to her older sister’s life choices. The one thing Callie’s proud of is her certification as a yoga instructor, but the Covid pandemic derailed her career, leaving her to daydream of one day having a yoga practice on a tropical beach. After learning about long-lost members of her family and meeting them, an idea was born: Callie would move to Haybeck Farm in New Hampshire and open a yoga studio, The Zen Goat. Classes would include adorable baby goats and lure tourists from their hectic city lives to the bucolic countryside.
From the moment the book opens at the start of Callie’s first four-day yoga retreat, things go awry. Though she loves the baby goats, she’s fighting an unexpected allergy–to goats. Along with the babies, she also rescued an adult goat, Bugsy, who always finds ways out of his enclosure. Her first clients, a group of four affluent women from Boston, including a social media influencer and her best frenemy, along with a ballerina and a medical student, all accompanied by a male driver/assistant, have arrived ahead of schedule with enough tension among them to defy even goat yoga. The influencer’s chihuahua, Matilda, immediately darts away to face off with Bugsy. When Callie hurries from the farmhouse to rescue the dog, her clients aren’t impressed by her frazzled appearance, especially when she falls and gets goat “raisins” caught in her braids. Matilda takes an instant dislike to her and bites her. After she finally gets the women and dog ushered into the guest cottage, Callie learns the massage therapist and esthetician she’s booked for the spa day that her clients requested during their retreat can’t make it.
From those opening minutes, the book offers mishaps, mayhem, and murder with a lively range of characters; an abundance of motives and secrets; relatives from both sides of the Haybeck family who want Callie off the farm; an adventurous great-aunt; and a handsome veterinarian who thinks Callie’s the last person who should have goats in her care. It’s all set against the kindness of family and a charming small town that may make Callie’s dream of a tropical escape fade a little more each day.
An Escape Goat, available March 12, 2024, from Level Best Books, checks all my favorite boxes: snappy dialogue, engaging, layered characters, a good mystery, and funny situations. I look forward to reading future books in the series. Who wants to book a retreat at The Zen Goat with me? I promise to leave my own neurotic chihuahua at home.
Read and reviewed from an ARC and cross-posted to Goodreads.
What a fantastic review! I’m beyond tickled that you had such a great time reading An Escape Goat and getting to know the characters. Thank you!
The pleasure was all mine! =)