Another week, another culinary cozy review! (Actually, I’m kind of behind schedule for my 52 Cozy Mysteries in 52 Weeks Challenge, so it probably has been longer than a week… but moving on!)
Title: Tastes Like Murder
Author: Catherine Bruns
Series: Cookies & Chance Mystery #1
First Published: August 30, 2015
Publisher: CreateSpace
Categories: Mystery
Acquired: from the author
*** Thank you to Catherine Bruns for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an unbiased review. ***
WHO DOESN’T LOVE COOKIES?
Sally Muccio has returned to her small hometown after catching her husband in bed with Amanda Gregorio, who just happens to be Sally’s enemy from high school. Trying to keep busy, Sally decides to open a cookie shop with her best friend, Josie Sullivan. I, for one, would be a frequent visitor to their shop!
Of course, things never go according to plan (this is a mystery, after all), so when Amanda is found dead on the doorstep of Sally’s cookie shop right after eating one of Sally’s cookies… well, things don’t look good. The police confirm that it was murder – Amanda died from ingesting bee venom, something she was highly allergic to.
So who, besides Sally, would have wanted Amanda dead? Apparently half the town. Amanda, who owned a high-end spa, was NOT a nice person and plenty of people around town had a reason to want her dead, including her employees.
OH THOSE KOOKY PARENTS!
Helping Sally in her quest to clear her name is her younger sister Gianna and their wise grandmother, plus Josie of course. Amanda’s mother Kate also believes Sally wasn’t involved and wants Sally to find the real killer.
In the “not really helping” group are Sally’s parents – her father is too busy obsessing over his own mortality (he brings measuring tapes to funerals to check coffins out) and her mother is too busy acting and dressing like a teenager, even at the most inappropriate times. There’s also Sally’s cranky neighbour, an old Italian grandmother, who seems to think Sally did kill Amanda.
Being that this is a cozy mystery of the culinary kind, there’s the prerequisite second death roughly halfway through the book, lots of drool-worthy cookies, and a love-triangle between Sally, Mike Donovan (her ex-boyfriend from high school) and Brian Jenkins (a newcomer to town and a police officer).
I LOVE HALF THE CHARACTERS…
… and the other half annoys me. LOL. It’s actually pretty balanced. I LOVE Sally – she’s a great character. And I really like Josie, Sally’s grandmother Rosa and Sally’s sister Gianna. But I really didn’t care for Sally’s parents or Mrs. Gavelli, the busybody neighbour. I didn’t like Amanda either, but most of the time you aren’t supposed to really like the victim, right? And even the two guys Sally was choosing between – I really liked Brian and really didn’t like Mike (although I have a sneaky suspicion that Sally will choose Mike). I think that the fact that I had such a strong like/dislike for each character shows that the author did a great job of writing them and giving them distinct personalities.
A CLIFFHANGER?!
The book actually ends in a cliffhanger! What? Well, the mystery gets solved (this was fairly easy to figure out, I actually guessed the killer pretty early on but I did have a couple of details wrong) but we only *almost* get to find out which man Sally chooses. Basically, she makes a phone call but we don’t find out who’s on the receiving end! Which means readers will need to check out Book 2 in the series to find out who she chose. Luckily for me, Book 2 is already out so I’m off to see if my hunch is correct!
READ IT FOR YOURSELF
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