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jenn

Murder by Death

I read cozy and historical mysteries, a bit of Paranormal/UF, and to mix it up, I read science and gardening books on occasion.

Meet Your Baker (Bakeshop Mystery, #1)

Meet Your Baker - Ellie Alexander

A strong first in a new series that has a lot of potential to be interesting, although not without a few quirks.

 

Jules is a pastry chef who has just returned to her hometown in Oregon after splitting up with her husband.  She's helping her mom run the family pastry shop while she decides what to do next.

 

There's cliches here as there are in most any other cozy, but the author at least tries to put her own stamp on them.  Jules was a pastry chef on a cruise liner for almost a decade and it adds some interest to her backstory; her broken marriage doesn't follow the tried and true stereotype either and the author strives to add a semblance of realism to the pain of splitting up without the MC wallowing.  She also avoids info-dumping through a small number of flash-backs which was nice but sometimes painful because as a reader there were times I thought she strung it out just a bit too long.

 

Mostly, I enjoyed the story for its setting (Oregon) and its characters; they weren't flaky or fluffy but they weren't bogged down in being maudlin, melodramatic or overly earnest either.  I did not like the MC's tendency to run around town accusing people of murder to their faces - who does that?!? and I'm not a fan of foreshadowing, which the author uses several times, but neither were insurmountable issues that stopped me enjoying the story overall.  The murder plot was... ok; neither good nor bad.

 

The book ended with her marriage unresolved, which of course means a future book will involve her estranged husband showing up in town hoping for a reconciliation. The preview of the second book reveals another worn out story plot: reality TV comes to town!  (Because cooking competitions are not used nearly enough in cozy mysteries!)  In spite of these cookie-cutter, ticky-tacky plot backdrops, I'll read the next book, because I want to find out if the author can continue to twist the cliches into something worth reading.

 

 

[PopSugar 2015 Challenge:  A Book by a female author.]