I liked the story, but I’m not much impressed with the people that live in the town of Wingate. I liked Aspen and I thought Mallory shouldn’t be so judgmental of her.

Halfway through the second chapter I was hoping Claudia would be the murder victim. She is a firm believer of “don’t mix business with pleasure”, which seem to be the reason she’s not nice to her coworkers.

Alas. There is always the next book in the series.

In this book Beatrice Wright is killed. She’s an unpleasant person that seems to thrive on picking fights with people and accusing them of being dishonest (cheating, stealing). Most people in town don’t seem to like her, but it is Mallory Monroe owner of a cookie shop that finds her body. Earlier in the day Mallory had a fight with Beatrice at her shop where Beatrice accused Mallory of using a cookie recipe that was stolen from Beatrice. A fight that was witnessed by the town’s detective.

During an interview he gives Mallory the impression he suspects her of the murder. It can’t be a very strong suspicion as Mallory is not placed under arrest. Mallory, however, decides she must find the real person that killed Beatrice to clear her name. Next to running her business.

Her friend, Kip, decides to help and volunteers Mallory to be the chair of the re-instated pie contest. The pie contest is part of the Garden Tour events and Beatrice was heavily involved with the organisation of that. Kip reasons it gives Mallory an in to talk to many people that knew (and probably disliked) Beatrice.

The first meeting of the Garden Tour organisation Mallory attends is that evening and is all kinds of wrong. First of all, all the chairs are facing the window. That means that the people attending the meeting have to look against the light to see the person in the front that is speaking. Second, when Mallory tells the group she has nothing to report yet because she has only been chair of the pie contest committee since earlier that day, there are murmurs of discontent. Those people seem to have forgotten that it was only decided the previous day or so to have the pie contest. I doubt there would have been much to report even if Mallory had had time to get up to speed. Third, when the fire alarm goes off and someone in an apparent panic starts the evacuation. Evacuations should be done calmly yet quickly. Not a panic where people are likely to push and shove and people end up getting trampled.

After that Mallory started to behave a bit stupidly in regards to her investigation and I became less invested in the story.

I read an ARC through NetGalley.