A Wytch's Book Review Blog

Candy Slain Murder (Country Store Mysteries #8) by Maddie Day

As December sweeps through South Lick, Indiana, Robbie’s life seems merry and bright like the string lights glistening around town. But strange happenings signal a bumpy ride into the holidays. First a man raises eyebrows at Pans ‘N Pancakes when he claiming to be the long-lost half-brother of Robbie’s assistant. Then a fire destroys the home of a controversial anesthesiologist, exposing skeletal remains in his attic. Helplessly intrigued, all Robbie wants for Christmas is to stop her winter wonderland from becoming a real nightmare. With a decades-old mystery taking shape, can she run as fast as she can in pursuit of a killer who’s harder to crack than a stale gingerbread man?

Ah Christmas, a time of feasting, merriment, family ..... and murder! We have a young man claiming to be the illegitimate son of the Mayor (spoiler time .. he is! oh and he is welcomed into the family), a corpse discovered in the attic of a house, and then the corpse's sibling dies.  The problem is neither the corpse nor the sibling appear to have died of natural causes and when it comes to the latter fingers are being pointed at the new person in town, namely the illegitimate son.  Now Robbie needs to keep her Festive Spirits high and her wits about her to help her old nemesis crack this case open, without ending up as dead as a 6 month old Christmas tree.

A Game of Cones (Ice Cream Parlor Mystery #2) by Abby Collette

Bronwyn Crewse is delighted that Crewse Creamery, the ice cream shop her family has owned for decades, is restored to its former glory and serving sweet frozen treats to happy customers in the picturesque small town of Chagrin Falls, Ohio. But when a big city developer comes to town intent on building a mall, a killer with a frozen heart takes him out.

After literally stumbling across the body, one of Win's closest friends becomes the prime suspect, and to make things worse, Win's aunt has come to town with the intention of taking command of Crewse Creamery. Even though Win has a rocky road ahead to help her friend and keep her ice cream shop, it'll take more than a sprinkle of murder to stop her from solving the crime and saving the day.

An Interview With A Character

What is your full name?

Bronwyn Crewse. But practically everyone calls me Win.

What is your Profession?

I am an ice cream maker. Although I have an MBA, I am presently the manager of my family’s ice cream shop.

What is your current favourite book or movie?

I am learning to like shows about amateur sleuths and murder mysteries because they seem to be happening in my real life. But right now, I think my favorite is Knives Out.

What is your go to comfort book or movie?

I don’t have a lot of time to watch movies. Running an ice cream shop is a full-time business. And before I came back home to Chagrin Falls, I was super busy at a New York ad agency.

If someone was to play you in a movie who would it be? OR what would be the character you would want to be in a book?

If someone was to play me in a movie, it would be Ruby Barker.

What is your ideal evening?

Listen to music on the jukebox in the ice cream parlor and making ice cream because both of those things remind me of my Grandma Kay.

Sweet Revenge (Dewberry Farm #7) by Karen MacInerney

Fall into another sweet Dewberry Farm adventure! When Priscilla Jordan, a wealthy descendant of Buttercup's new living history museum's historic owner, turns up dead in one of the museum's cabins, the police finger local meadery owner Serafine Alexandre as the killer. There's bad blood in Priscilla's family--a disgruntled husband, a disinherited cousin, and a ne'er-do-well son--but the local police don't seem to care. Dewberry Farm homesteader Lucy Resnick's desperate to help her friend... but someone's warning her off the case.

When an intruder pins a threatening note to the farm's back door with a knife, Lucy knows she's getting close to the the truth... and if she doesn't figure it out fast, she may be next on the chopping block. With a twisty historical mystery, easy, delicious honey-themed recipes and beeswax projects you can make at home, and a cast of fun characters--both animal and human--you'll love this new visit to Buttercup!

Phew Karen MacInerney has done it again! Things seem to have settled down in Buttercup, the only problem Lucy has is a couple of her new hives don't seem to be thriving. One of the local meadery owners has come (along with the Meadery's intern) to see if she can solve the problem, the diagnosis is good (a couple of new Queen Bees are needed) but after Serafine and Chloe have left Lucy discovers a Voodoo doll, made out of beeswax, nailed to a fence post and her cows and goats let loose and in her crops and orchard! Lucy cannot believe that Serafine would do either deed, but she and her sister Aimee are the only followers of Voodoo in the area. As if that isn't bad enough the next day/evening Lucy overhears a couple of arguments, both involving one person (Priscilla Jordan), and then Lucy and her friend Quinn find Priscilla dead in a new addition to the living history museum.  When the somewhat inept police chief arrests Serafine for the murder Lucy needs to step up and find out the truth - after all there are plenty of other suspects that the police aren't even looking at!

Goodnight Moo (A Buttermilk Creek Mystery #2) by Mollie Cox Bryan

With a foster cow in her corral and a new calf on the way, Brynn MacAlister has a lot on her plate. Especially since her micro-dairy farm is hosting the first annual cheesemakers contest at this year’s summer fair. A relative newcomer, Brynn’s hoping the contest becomes a tradition, bonding her even more strongly to the community. But when a mysterious tractor accident looks suspiciously like murder, Brynn suspects someone is up to
no-gouda . . .
 
Some folks say the lead suspect was just defending his underage daughter from a suitor more mature than a vintage provolone, but Brynn isn’t buying it. Especially when another dead body turns up and Brynn’s top cheesemaker falls under suspicion. It’s enough to make a girl bluer than her best Stilton. But not enough to stop Brynn from getting to the bottom of things. What she discovers is the small town harbors some pretty unsavory characters. And the closer Brynn gets to the killer, the deeper she gets into danger . . .

Wow! Mollie Cox Bryan pulled out all the stops and then some in this book! We have an accidental death (or is it?), a murder, two different suspects (neither of whom people can believe did the deed), a fair being sabotaged, shootings, concussion and chaos! Add in a cast of somewhat dodgy characters, a scared cow and the FBI ... and well I don't want to say anymore, read the book and gasp along!

Christmas Cow Bells (A Buttermilk Creek Mystery #1) by Mollie Cox Bryan

Christmas is a time for new beginnings, so after her big breakup, Brynn MacAlister takes the gouda with the bad. With her three Red Devon cows, she settles in bucolic Shenandoah Springs, eager for a new life as an organic micro-dairy farmer and cheese-maker. Then her dear cow Petunia’s bellows set the whole town on edge. But it isn’t until Brynn’s neighbor, Nancy, dies in a mysterious fire that her feelings about small town life begin to curdle . . .
 
It seems some folks were not happy with Nancy’s plan to renovate the Old Glebe Church. But is a fear of change a motivation for murder? As a newcomer, Brynn can’t ignore the strange events happening just on the other side of her frosty pasture—and soon on her very own farm. Suddenly Christmas doesn’t feel so festive as everyone demands she muzzle sweet Petunia, and Brynn is wondering if someone wants to silence her—for good . . .

Brynn has bought out her ex-fiance (who became ex when she discovered him playing "away games") of the property they bought sight unseen, things have settled, she has three cows and she has started to make artisan cheeses, then she gets complaints about one of her cows that is making noise all the time (she had a still born calf - so whilst she can be milked she is obviously in great distress), a member of the local CSA she has joined has an idea on how to help Petunia (the cow), but it gets side-lined for a few days after her neighbour was killed in an arson attack.

Now odd things are happening at her own property and Brynn is running scared, luckily she has another couple of good friends in Willow and Schuyler (the former being and organic veg farmer, the latter a Vet-acupuncturist), between the three of them (and Schuyler's brother the Fire Marshall), they hope to help the cows and keep Brynn from being run off her farm! Add in a cute rescue dog named Freckles and this is a great read.

And Then There Were Crumbs (A Cookie House Mystery #1) by Eve Calder

Kate McGuire's life was sweet in Manhattan before she lost her restaurant job and fiancé both. But sometimes that's just the way the cookie crumbles, and soon she finds herself starting from scratch in the island town of Coral Cay, Florida. It has everything she's looking for: sunny beaches, friendly locals, and a Help Wanted sign in the bakery shop window. Once she convinces the shop's crusty owner Sam Hepplewhite to hire her, Kate can't tie on her apron on fast enough. Little does she know that trouble, like warm dough, is on the rise. . .

Stewart Lord is a real estate developer with a taste for a different type of dough: the green kind. He knows that he could make a killing by purchasing the Cookie House from Sam, who flat-out refuses to sell. But when Stewart turns up the heat on Sam--then turns up dead after eating a fresh batch of Sam's cinnamon rolls--all eyes focus on the town's beloved bakery. When the police arrest Sam for murder, Kate must somehow prove that her curmudgeonly boss is innocent. Enlisting the help of a team of lovable locals, Kate sets out to catch the real culprit with his hand in the cookie jar...before someone else gets burned.

What a great start to a new series, Eve Calder has knocked this one out of the park :D

Kate had everything going for her in Manhattan, until one fateful day when she discovered her fiance had been cheating on her, her landlord had sold the apartment block and she needed to move out, oh and the restaurant she was working in had to close down! Still she had heard good things about Coral Cay in Florida, so she packed up her car and headed down there, only to discover she couldn't land a job and her brother in law hadn't been maintaining her car (as he had said he had), luckily when it blew up at the side of the road a guardian angel in the form of a local mechanic comes to her aid, not only will he sort out her car (which he has promptly nicknamed), but he also tells her of a potential job at a place called the Cookie House.  Apparently Sam (the Cookie House's owner) needs someone front of house whilst he baked all the bread (for some place called the Cookie House not a cookie was made!), to sweeten the deal Kate is also allowed to bunk down upstairs, so far so good, but then Sam is arrested for the murder of a local slimeball and Kate, along with a raft of new friends, cannot believe this and so they club together to not only keep the shop open (oh and Kate plans on adding cookies to the mix), but also to make sure that Sam doesn't spend the rest of his life making bread in the prison kitchens!

Fruit Baskets and Holiday Caskets (Down South Café Mystery #5) by Gayle Leeson

Amy Flowers thinks her biggest problem is going to be creating an enormous cake dummy to mount atop her car for Winter Garden's upcoming Christmas parade. But when one of Roger's employees is murdered, making the float is the least of Amy's worries. Her childhood friend is a prime suspect, Aunt Bess is making a new Pinterest board: Things That'll Probably Kill Me, and her boyfriend's mother is insisting on helping Amy make three-hundred-seventy-five sugar cookies to hand out along the parade route.

When Amy starts trying to clear Roger of the murder, she unexpectedly finds herself involved in international intrigue. How will our favorite café owner outwit sophisticated criminals who want to deck the halls with her head?

Gayle Leeson has done it again! This time Amy (and her staff/customers) have got roped in to be part of the Christmas parade, the idea being that they can advertise the cafe/diner by having a float in the parade, there is only one problem, they don't have a float they can decorate and so plan B consists of Amy's bright yellow VW bug being topped by a huge false cake!  Before they can get started though there is a shocking death, Amy's friend Roger finds out that one of his employees has had a car accident and didn't make it, the problem they then discover is that the accident was no accident!

Now Amy is trying to help her boyfriend Ryan Hall, his boss Sheriff Billings figure out what happened, at the same time she is trying to be friends with Ryan's mother, stop her own mother and Great Aunt finding out about the mock cake before it is done, oh and figure out why the new widow seems to hate Amy's cousin Jackie! All this before the Christmas Parade, no pressure then!

Robbing Peter to Kill Paul (Danger Cove Quilting Mystery #3) by Elizabeth Ashby, Gin Jones

For quilt appraiser Keely Fairchild, the opportunity to appraise more than a hundred quilts feels almost too good to be true. And then she learns the bad news: the quiltmaker was murdered and the police have no leads. Keely suspects that the quilts hold the key to the dead woman's death as well as to her life. While looking for answers in the quilts, Keely uncovers a variety of suspects, including the greedy heir, a smarmy used-car salesman, a feuding neighbor, and even a rival quiltmaker. As if this project weren't enough to complicate Keely's quiet life, she's also under a short deadline to find new meeting space for the quilters' guild and she's running out of time to decide whether to let charming local reporter Matt Viera into her life. Of course, those other problems may not matter if the quiltmaker's killer strikes again, this time to prevent Keely from finding the clues in the calico.

Keely is finally attempting to sew a quilt, well an appliquéd block at any rate! When a man turns up at the quilt guild, Keely ends up heading out to appraise his late cousin's numerous quilts, the man is expecting major moolah from the quilts and doesn't accept Keely's initial statement that he would be lucky to get a few hundred dollars per quilt (he was expecting another nought on there!), when he tells her not to bother she thinks that is it, until the next day when the museum asks her to do the same job! Apparently everything in the late Miriam's house has been left to the museum and NOT the aforementioned cousin, now Keely finds out that Miriam was killed by a pile of quilts, and there is more than one person who could have, more to the point WOULD have done the deed.  Now Keely, along with Matt the reporter, needs to find out the truth or this could be her last ever quilt appraisal!

Whack The Mole (Whispering Bay Mystery #2) by Maria Geraci

Lucy is a human lie detector. Her rescue dog Paco is a ghost whisperer. Together, they solve crime in this laugh-out-loud cozy mystery series!

It is not long since Lucy and her dog Paco solved a cold case crime, now they find themselves back in the thick of things when Paco sniffs out a corpse, that turns out the be a dead FBI agent!, and Lucy has to be told that Whispering Bay is hosting a hideout, well the FBI are looking after someone who has snitched on the mob and they need to keep him alive to testify.  The only problem is they know that someone nicknamed El Tigre is looking to kill him, and they are prepared to take out anyone in the way ... and that could include Lucy!

Add in a new delivery guy, a film crew and general mix-ups and Lucy has more than home made muffins on her plate!

Thread and Dead (Apron Shop #2) by Elizabeth Penney

Another great cozy mystery from Elizabeth Penney, a cat, a murder and friendships - perfect!

Blueberry Cove, Maine, is gearing up for the annual week long lobster festival, this means plenty of good food, lots of foot traffic for the shops and some fun times from cardboard boat racing to the inaugural lobster bib competition! Iris has been drafted in to be a judge at the fashion show (along with some others) and the sole judge of the lobster bibs, but before all this she and Grammie need to make sure their shop is running smoothly and as part of this they need vintage aprons/linens to supplement their stock, so when the shop gets a call from a local saying she wishes to unload both Iris arranges to go an see them, this visit sets in motion two new (well one reignited) friendships, murder, sabotage and elder abuse - now Iris, her Grammie and her friends (Bella, Sophie and Madison), need to find out the truth, before someone else ends up with the fishes!