The Innocent Dead

A Witch Cozy Mystery

By: Jill Nojack

Narrated by: Brian Callanan

Length: 6 hrs and 57 mins

Publisher's summary

Natalie Taylor, high priestess of the coven in quirky Giles, Massachusetts, just wants to stop seeing dead people. With all the elements needed for the spell now in place, she can finally complete the ritual to push the ghosts away.

But when a body is found in Corey Woods, giving her the opportunity to prove that her long-lost love wasn't guilty of the identical murders years ago, some of the answers she needs to clear him lie on the far side of the veil. She's going to need help from both the living and the dead to catch the real killer.

©2017 Jill Nojack (P)2017 Jill Nojack

Great fantasy with witches, ghosts, and murder!

The Innocent Dead
A Witch Cozy Mystery
By: Jill Nojack
Narrated by: Brian Callanan
This is an audible book I requested and the review is voluntary.
This was a different kind of murder mystery. The fist one killed is a very annoying woman in town and I wanted to kill here! But soon many are killed. Soon it is clear it is a serial killer. Is is from years ago and new one. Many believed it was the killer that 'got away' before that came back and started killing again. But there someone in the town that knows better, the witch that loved the person accused of being the killer. He was killed also by the killer and is a ghost. She can see him and now she that she is old and can't wait to be with him again. There are lots of twists and turns, clues, great characters, and I always guess wrong...I would be a horrible detective! Something magic but good/sad(?) happens when the witch gets attacked...no spoilers here. Good story and mystery.
The narrator was great about doing all these voices and keeping the story flowing wonderfully! He does the annoying lady too good! LOL Great performance.

Ghosts, Witches, And Kittens Oh My!

Ghosts, Witches, And Kittens Oh My!



The Innocent Dead is a Cozy Mystery and #1 in The Maid, Mother, and Crone Series by Jill Nojack.


Read by Brian Callanan


HFN Ending


This series is a spin-off of the Bad Tom Series.
You get a temporary ending point, but the overall story arc continues.
My philosophy is ALWAYS to read a series in order! :-).


Length: 6 hrs and 56 mins


Content Advisory:
There are some mild sex references and scenes, but not much and no "C" words were used.


♥ Story ♥
The Innocent Dead hits the ground running, and almost leaves those of us who have not read the previous series behind. It took me a while to aclimate to this title, but once I caught on, I didn't want to let go!


The series focuses on the triad of Maid, Mother, and Crone. Don't assume elder witch Natalie is the crone, because she will be more than happy to tell you why you are wrong. The ladies of the story all come with their own strengths and weaknesses, but each one is just as endearing. There is also potential fresh blood being introduced.


This story has a mystery at it's heart, and it is an adventure to figure out. A murderer from the past is killing again, but the one they are blaming has been missing for several decades. Lucky for them, Natalie sees dead people, quite litereally. But how do you explain that to a skeptic Sherriff? Seriously, they need to get that guy a girlfriend.


It's entertaining, heartwarming, and all magical. I want to read the Bad Tom series now. Hopefully that will come to audio in the near future. I will definately be listening to the rest of this series.


♥ Author ♥
This is my 1st read/listen by Jill Nojack. This is her only audio title, but I hope they bring her other series to audio too! Her characters have such heart, and I want more!
Jill has 1 Audio titles.


♥ Narrator(s) ♥
This is my 1st listen by Brian Callanan and he did an amazing job. He did a full cast of characters, both male and female, and I couldn't help but get lost.
Brian has 21 Audio titles.


Ebook obtained through Kindle Unlimited
Audiobook obtained for free at my request and I am voluntarily leaving this unbiased review
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The Innocent Dead: A Witch Cozy Mystery

Overall this book was good. I liked the narrator and the different voices the charters were given. For me, the book was a little slow in the beginning building up. The urban fantasy, paranormal and mystery was a nice touch of adding new elements into the book. I wish the story would have caught me more, I expected a lot from this book. *This book was given to me for free at my request and I provided this voluntary review.*

Cute and Cozy!

Paranormal books are a little outside my preferred genre, but I found this one to be a very enjoyable listen. I was captivated from the very beginning. I loved the quirky characters. The story is full of magic and surprises. I thought the narrator did a good job with the various characters and was able to perform distinguishable voices. The story has great imagery and is a standalone listen, and part of a series. I requested a review copy audiobook and have voluntarily written this review. I would continue to listen to more books by both the author and narrator.

I truly enjoyed this

This was a very enjoyable and sometimes funny storyline. It was a great listen. Enjoy

This is the first in this series, but not for the

This audiobook appears as if it's the first in a series - which it is. However, these characters have developed from a previous series (Bad Tom?) So coming into the story, confusion set in, as the 'backstory' is barely touched upon, other than references. For some (like me) one would have to just accept not knowing, rather than stopping and finding the other books. So it's not completely a stand alone book.

The characters are fabulous, though. The young, the old; the magical and non-magical; the dead and the living all held their own and stayed true to character.
The talented and gifted Mr Callanan provided each character with a unique and solid voice. He captivated my attention and was the sole reason I stayed with the book. I'm happy I did, because once I released my confusion and 'went with it', the story wrapped around me. I'm ready for him to take me on more adventures and have already downloaded another book he narrates!

I would recommend this paranormystery, but strongly suggest reading the others first.

I review all ebooks and audiobooks, however: "I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review."

Nice read

This book has a good storyline, characters and narrator. The story held my attention throughout.

I wasn't thrilled with the narrator

I struggled to listen to this book as the narrator made the female characters sound so child like. I found myself double checking to make sure it wasn't an young adult book because of that. I believe the story itself was interesting, but just could not get past the narration.

This book was given to me for free at my request and I provided this voluntary review.

Quick listen with a surprising mystery

Well, to start, there were definitely a series of events before this book that I am not privy to and probably maybe should have been at some point, lol. I'd just be sitting here, listening along when all of a sudden this book would lay some backstory on me like 'oh, btdubs, the same Tom married to this one witch is actually the same Tom that was magically enslaved as a cat for decades, but before all that used to be married to this other witch who is like 40 years older than she was at the time. They're just friends now though.'

Uh... okay?

'And there was this incident with an Egyptian goddess almost destroying the town' (or something like that. It was something suitably bonkers like this though)...

....Okaaaay?

'and such and such character from the-last-series-not-this-one is such a meanie. Let's not talk about him.'

Yeah! Screw that guy, probably!

'and Tom can still totally turn into a cat. So can his wife, now, apparently!'

Sweet! Unexplained shapeshifting! What a time to be alive!

I don't have problems reading series that take place after other series like this, except I always feel like I'm missing out on all kinds of things by not having the inside scoop, so to speak. Like if I'm missing out on an event that big, are there things about these characters I would like more had I known them in the books before this book? Do they have quirks I am not aware of? It doesn't help that Cassie and Tom, who appear to have been the protagonists of the series before this one, reference characters and events from that series like I'm supposed to know who they are or how they matter. So it was a little 'uh... okay, I'll roll with it.' every time. Especially considering some of this stuff sounds uh... weird, out of context, lol.

But, I digress.

In this one, we have Natalie, Cassie and Gillian, who are witches in the small town of Giles, Massachusetts which is semi-close to Salem. Natalie has the power to see dead people. Specifically, lately, she sees her old lover, who she knows is dead, obviously, because his ghost occasionally tends to hang out in her vicinity, but who everyone else thinks murdered a bunch of people years ago and disappeared.

Cassie, the woman married to the cat, and Jillian, the woman who used to be married to the cat, and Natalie were just about to finish their preparations for casting a spell to make it so that Natalie's dead-person-seeing powers go away, when a body is found, and the murder looks identical to those murders he was accused of all those years ago. 

So, now the hunt is on for the real killer!

So, one of the first things in this story that happens to kick off the plot is that Cassie and Tom stumble over a corpse in the woods while out walking as cats (and definitely not doing anything else as cats), and instead of calling the cops, they call Natalie, because she needs a corpse for her 'go away dead people!' spell (it's okay though, because the spell won't mess with the police investigation, so they just need to borrow it first). Then, they use the half hour time in which Natalie and Jillian travel to them to have random it's-cold-and-we're-naked-because-shapeshifting sex in the woods next to that corpse they just found. Because of course they do. THAT'S AMOOOORRREEEEEEE! *smashes head into desk*

The corpse turns out to be that of the super mean, rich, Louis Vuitton bag carrying, Mercedes driving, impatient, super entitled lady we met in the beginning of this story when she went on an angry shopping rampage through this town. I mean, nobody in this town liked this lady (except her husband) but, we still need to figure out who killed her, even if she is pretty much Cruella de Ville with a bit less puppy strangling.

I found I liked it more as it went. As a whodunnit, it did surprise me a few times. I always try and guess mysteries with varying levels of success, but this one is deceptively good at keeping the whodunnit an actual mystery until the appropriate time. I will admit that I did not expect this to be so, but there you go. Surprising cozy mystery is surprising!

Brian Callanan, the narrator, did a pretty great job. I feel like this sort of book is almost expected to have a female narrator, as most of the main characters are female. I mean it's the Maid, Mother, and Crone series, after all, amirite? But, he did it in a way that never made it feel lacking. He made every character different and unique, made the creepy characters sound creepy, and the British character sound suitably British. Oddly enough, the only characters that I didn't really like his narration were dudes. Mostly Tom. He had a really strange cadence, which may have been on purpose, I dunno. It certainly didn't help that Tom still often talks like he's in the 1960s, which I didn't really like. But, nevertheless, I feel like I enjoyed this book a lot more than I would have had I read it in print.

So, conclusion, I liked it, but I didn't love it. I didn't really start enjoying myself until well after halfway through. I still thought it was a good three star story though!

I received a free copy of this audiobook from the narrator in exchange for an honest review.

The Innocent Dead

A cute witch cozy mystery. My interest was kept throughout even though things got a little slow at a couple of points. I thought the narrator did a really good job with the variety of characters.

I was provided a free review copy of this audiobook by the author, narrator, or publisher in exchange for an unbiased review.