Rating: ☆☆☆☆
Audience: Cozy Mystery
Length: 307 pages
Author: Ellie Alexander
Publisher: St. Martin’s Paperbacks
Release Date: December 30th, 2014
Image & Other Reviews on: Goodreads
BOOK SUMMARY:
Welcome to Torte-a friendly, small-town family bake shop where the treats are so good that, sometimes, it’s criminal…
After graduating from culinary school, Juliet Capshaw returns to her quaint hometown of Ashland, Oregon, to heal a broken heart and help her mom at the family bakery. The Oregon Shakespeare Festival is bringing in lots of tourists looking for some crumpets to go with their heroic couplets. But when one of Torte’s customers turns up dead, there’s much ado about murder…
The victim is Nancy Hudson, the festival’s newest board member. A modern-day Lady Macbeth, Nancy has given more than a few actors and artists enough reasons to kill her…but still. The silver lining? Jules’s high school sweetheart, Thomas, is the investigator on the case. His flirtations are as delicious as ever, and Jules can’t help but want to have her cake and eat it too. But will she have her just desserts? Murder might be bad for business, but love is the sweetest treat of all.
FOUND A NEW COZY SERIES.
This was a friend recommendation that did not disappoint! I found a love for cozy mysteries last year and now I may have found the series I read this year.
I looooove that this was set at a bakery! As someone who bakes a lot I loved getting to see all of the delicious treats come alive. What’s fun is that anything made in the book is left with a recipe at the end! I plan on trying some of the ones I read about.
I thought Juliet Capshaw was a fun main character. A bit ditzy about locking her shop’s door at night, but otherwise a pretty solid amateur sleuth. I only got the beginnings of her story and would love to continue unravelling everything. I think there’s a great set-up for a little romance, some growth in the bake shop and more.
It was a charming read, in a smaller town in Oregon. I liked the dramatic characters and Shakespearean anecdotes. It’s a typical cozy mystery, but isn’t that the point? I love the simplicity and easy-going-ness of it all. This is what this genre is about for me and why I fell for them!
Overall audience notes:
- Cozy mystery
- Language: none
- Romance: kisses
- Violence: murder, physical altercations, smoke (from surrounding wildfires)
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