A ghostly mystery for a medium to solve sounded all sorts of fun listening. I was glad to try a new to me author and narrator for the first installment in this paranormal cozy mystery series.

A Medium’s Birthday Surprise jumped right into things with antique shop owner, Becky Tibbs, getting a visit from the ghost of her high school crush who disappeared and died ten years before on her birthday. Since that moment, her parents passed away in a car crash and she, her brother, Bobby, and her sister, Barbara, learned they inherited their mother’s heritage- a medium talent to see and talk to the dead. Becky embraced the gift and is known as a medium to the living and helper to the dead while her siblings do their best to downplay or ignore the talent.

A Medium’s Birthday Surprise introduces a fun and curious world where ghosts roam the streets of Asheville alongside the living. I loved how the ghosts and the family medium talent were at the center of it all. It opened on a scene at Becky’s business and started me out feeling like I had missed something, but then darted between present events and getting the listener up to speed about Becky, her background, and her family as well as history with each newly introduced character so I lost the confused feeling. The situation is important, but not drastic since the ghost’s death was a decade earlier, but she must figure out the truth to help settle the ghosts so there is a cold case mystery and their small part of Ashville and growing up there allows her to have the right contacts in the police and the community to do a fair job of investigating which she does when her mind’s not caught up on stuff that affects the pacing of the story.

The pace is uneven at times Becky gets philosophical about her family, her past, and her view of religion so that there were lag moments before the plot would pick back up again. Nearer the end, the story settled into the plot and a nice pace as she tracked down the facts of Josh, her high school crush’s, death and another related angry ghost.

A Medium’s Birthday Surprise sets up for a full series of further paranormal mysteries. I thought the main character was sweet and generous so she needed to help others even ghosts. The side characters that were introduced will be as welcome as Becky in future books.

Kathleen Britt had a distinct narration voice and way of voicing the characters that wasn’t bad, but I did find distracting. Her male voices had some frogginess to them. I needed time to settle into her style of narration. The production quality of the audiobook was excellent.

In summary, I liked it, but also felt it had first book in series issues and I wasn’t completely immersed in the story though I want to go on to book two. The medium and ghost world the author created was great and I love that the main character solves ghostly mysteries. I think others who are looking for paranormal cozy mysteries should take a look at the series.