Just Finished Reading Aloha Alibi by Jasmine Webb

Before checking out the short novel Aloha Alibi by Jasmine Webb from my library I had never heard the term "cozy mystery" before, but now that I've read it I'm pretty sure about what this subgenre of mystery fiction is all about...and I like it.  Aloha Alibi, published just this past year, is billed as the first book in the Charlotte Gibson Mysteries series...but this author is really churning out the books, with the fourth one already coming out this year! Charlotte "Charlie" Gibson is a young adult millennial, an intelligent underachiever in school who works at a jewelry store in Seattle when it is robbed one day, the criminal being a hood from an area crime family.  Forced to shoot dead the man who is about to kill her, she has to flee to her childhood home on Maui, Hawaii after his brothers swear vengeance.  There she lives with her doting mother (who is always trying to get her to sleep with men to produce grandchildren), gets a job at an ice cream store, is reacquainted with her old school friend Zoe (now a doctor) and of course gets embroiled in a murder mystery.  Along with two eccentric, but highly capable and shrewd elderly ladies who are vying with her for the reward money, Charlotte dives into the case...since this is "Book One" in the series you can surmise that she survives it all.  Aside from the mystery itself, I was charmed by the social interplay between the characters, giving the story a very warm and funny aura that attracted me to the characters...I could especially relate to Charlotte's early adult struggles with economic independence.  When the next Charlotte Gibson mystery is available from my library for me to read (I just put it on hold), I'll continue with this series, which I recommend as fun, "cozy" reading....