Shifting and Shenanigans

Magical Mystery Book Club Book 1

By: Elizabeth Pantley

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

Length: 5 hrs and 57 mins

Publisher's summary

~ Finalist - 2022 Cozy Mystery Tribe Awards for BOOK OF THE YEAR ~

THIS IS NO ORDINARY BOOK CLUB!
Paige and her adventurous Aunt Glo inherit a country inn from eccentric GeeGee. Finally! They can get into the secret room in the basement that GeeGee kept locked! They discover it’s a wonderful library filled to the brim with mystery books. But more than the room was a secret – it’s a magical place that houses enchanted books. Paige and Glo find themselves absorbed into the book - smack-dab in the middle of a murder mystery, along with a motley group of book club friends. The club will need to work together to solve the case in order to get out of the book and back to their home.

"Will blow you away!" ~ Cozy Mystery Book Reviews

What book reviewers & bloggers say about the Magical Mystery Book Club:
~ One of the COOLEST books I've ever had the honor of reading!!!
~ I read 150+ cozy mysteries every year - this is by far the most unique storyline I've read.
~ An absolutely ingenious idea for a paranormal mystery!
~ The concept is nothing short of brilliant!
~ I'm ravenous for the next book!

A refreshing take on the cozy mystery.

Shifting and Shenanigans: Magical Mystery Book Club (Book 1), has Paige and her Aunt Glo inheriting an inn that has a magical library that requires them to solve the mysteries in the books.

Listening to the audiobook just made this wonderful, fantasy book shine more. I admit, when I first started listening I wasn’t sure about the narrator, the voice seemed to lack warmth. As the book went on, I adjusted to the rhythm and tone and found myself enjoying the book immensely.

I absolutely loved this book. The characters are a mish-mash of sweetness, goofiness, young, old, and a talking cat. The kind of group, as a reader, you wish you could join. Zell was my favorite character, a feisty old lady who loved adventure.

The plot was refreshing and so much fun. I mean, who wouldn’t want to live in a cozy mystery book and solve the mystery. There were rules both in real life and in the book that helped to make things connect together. As the group of characters learned how to deal with all the changes happening within their lives, true friendships started to develop along with humor on and off.

The author knows how to tell a story. I’ve read other books by her, and I’m never disappointed in the excellent writing. You can see how much she really enjoys entertaining her readers with this book. I’m hooked, and I can’t wait for more.

My review is voluntary and all comments and opinions expressed are
my own.

The performance was surprising. It had voice changes and voice inflections, and Appropriately handled punctuation. 

One thing I didn’t like was that there was no distinction or difference between character voices.

My kind of book club where anything can happen

My kind of book club where you need to expect the unexpected.
Have you ever enjoyed a book so much that you felt like you were apart of it? Well this is the unusual and fun idea behind this book series and I just love it. This book is so captivating right from the start and that's before all the magic starts. It's not a witchy type of story with spell casting etc but it has a paranormal side and the author certainly let's her imagination go wild, creating a wonderful story that grabs the listeners imagination. She has also backed it up with a very varied and quirky cast of characters, all of whom you can't help but like and laugh at, they are so easy to picture. The characters also have there own different personalities and skills, which sets it up nicely for future books. The mystery looked like it was heading in one direction and then a game changer was thrown in, which also explained a lot. I am off to start the next book.
Paige is trying to celebrate her birthday but as it is also the day her divorce is finale, it's hard. Then her aunt arrives with some sad and good news. The sad news is Paige's Great Grandmother has died. The good news is she has left her inn to the two of them. Paige spent a lot of time growing up there and it's the happy memories that causes her to drop everything and move in. The only requirement is that the two of them continue the book club by becoming it's first two official members. Six other members join the group a woman on probation and ordered to by the court, a hippie mother and her computer obsessed son, a prim and proper Asian woman, a feisty octogenarian and a gay man, not forgetting the library cat. Then the real fun begins because it's no ordinary book club and there first book is a murder mystery is a small town. One that they will have to solve.
This is my first time experiencing an AI narrator and while you don't get the range of voices from a narrator, especially the difference between male and female, I was pleasantly surprised how good it sounded. While I don't think AI will replace narrators I can see it becoming more popular as things develop and improve.

S&S Bk 1

I got this book because I liked the premise of falling into a book physically. While I'm not a huge fan of cozy mysteries I can't complain, since the series clearly identifies "cozy" but the series left me wanting more out of the story, I felt this series had loads of promise for it's idea's of travelling within the book - The character "Moonbeam" was totally redundant and in my opinion and brought the book down instead of adding a new dimension to the story line. Moonbeam also spends too much time minding other peoples business and wanting to correct their language and behaviour -
The virtual voice narrator still needs work, but it's one of the better virtual voice AI that I've listened to. The problem with virtual voice is that it lacks lilt and sarcasm, and idioms like "Tomato - Toe-mot-o" are lost on virtual voice, so it's difficult to feel part of the story in my opinion.

Amazing, creative and magical book! Don’t miss it!

I’d read this, but hearing it as an audiobook was a whole new exciting experience…I learned so many details that I either missed or didn’t remember from reading. Elizabeth Pantley’s imagination genius shines through the audiobook version as In print, just as well. Super creative and detailed descriptions of the locations, events, and especially her characters brings everything to life, and made me feel I was there! as another member of the book club, experiencing the feelings, enjoying the pre-meeting potlucks that carried into the library, choosing the book, and being whooshed right into the story as one of the characters.
Listening versus reading pulled me as deeply or more deeply into being part of the adventures of the club. I could picture teen Forest scrolling and being sassy to his nonconformist mom Moonbeam, see Frank lapping up his bowl of creamer with a sprinkle of coffee, and was as aghast and befuddled as they were upon discovering the murder and trying to solve it. Except I am not nearly as good at figuring out the details and final outcome of the whodunnit as the club members, so am blindsided and surprised to find out the who and why of the solution.
Just an absolutely amazing and creative plot, and gorgeous descriptions of the Inn and their destination, with the wildly creative and so realistic, true to life characters (maybe sans the talking cat and magical happenings), Shifting and Shenanigans transported me to their life and time, and wholly brought me a vacation from mine!
Absolutely give yourself the gift of Elizabeth Pantley’s beautiful creativity and listen to this and the rest of the series too!!

Cozy Mystery meets Magic Treehouse

"Shifting and Shenanigans (Magical Mystery Book Club #1)" by Elizabeth Pantley is what you get when you like cozy mysteries and the "Magic Treehouse" series, which I would argue are also cozy mysteries. In this book we get our classic cozy mystery main character who just went through a heartache and windfall. Then, on top of that something magical happens. She gets a talking cat and a magical
library that takes her and her bookclub into the cozy mysteries they're reading.

They have live out the investigation in that book, but being cozy mysteries it's more interesting than scary. Also, like the "Magic Treehouse" series, this was a completely new but accurate to the genre story not a jump into a classic. Though, I could see that being a good bridge to introducing classic mysteries. Or a take on re-introducing a classic to a new era of writing.

Great Story would prefer a person narrating, auto voice took away from the story

great story well worth the time but itc was difficult to enjooy while pushing past the auto narrator. I would have loved it more with a voice that can differentiate between characters.

Could have been a good listen…

The narration was absolutely horrible. The plot was a good premise, it may be better if read instead of listening. The narration made it difficult to follow and didn’t allow for emotional aspects to come forward. No “acting”