This is a high octane cozy mystery. Not only am I introduced to 14 characters and a cat with an unbecoming personality in the first 15 pages of story, but also the action is piled on in quick succession. Every now and then I wanted to come up for a breather, so I can only imagine what Libby McKenna was going through.

Despite the fact there’s a lot going on in this story, there is actually very little sleuthing going on. Could simply be because Libby is too busy with her own life to find out who killed Mickey Warren and why. We only find out that no one liked him. Libby doesn’t compile a suspects list and I think she only talked to one person who might be considered a suspect.

The story is fun, but the mystery could have been more present.

I read an ARC through NetGalley.

Great story.

Former journalist and current bakery owner and investigator Cherry Hinton is hired to look after a professional dancer that has made a few lucky escapes from freak accidents. Cherry enters the world of celebrity dance competitions as she investigates who of the celebrities or other professional dancers at the dance is right (I’m sure there is a network manager kicking himself for not thinking of that one first) wants to harm Nadiya Slipchencko.

It soon turns out that in the world of dance, everyone has had or wants to have sex with pretty much everyone else. This includes Felix Stow, now an MP and contestant, once a one-night-stand of Cherry, but mostly Jacob Stow’s brother. The two have some weird competitive streak going, which mainly makes me wonder what she saw in either brother. I’m calling the foolishness of youth and alcohol.

Cherry is assisted by her best-friend Kelsey, who has no filter, but a younger sister, who has even less of a filter. They take care of a lot of the comedy.

I liked this book a lot better than the previous story and I don’t think that is just due to the fact that I’ve actually seen a few series of Strictly.

I've read an ARC through NetGalley.

More romance than mystery. Still, enjoyable.

I liked the narration, it fitted the setting (1930s Brittan).

Towards the end, I liked the story less. It featured some cozy tropes I'm not a fan of.

I read a copy through NetGalley.

I was enjoying this story for the first 100 pages or so. Okay, chapters 2-4 had me wondering what they had to do with the plot. It’s mainly character building and background. Two things not usually found in cozy mysteries, not to that degree at least. But it was well written so I carried on.

Then in chapter 7 the story that I came for starts. The engagement party Dani Sloan is catering comes to a sudden end when a storm breaks out and tries to take off with the tent erected for the party. Apparently, weather in Illinois is so unpredictable that weather forecast sends out a 10 second (!) warning before a devastating storm breaks out. Surely, weather forecast can’t be that bad that it can’t predict ahead of time a storm that usually gets a name. It should have been all over the news for days and outdoor events would be cancelled for a storm of this proportion.

Though the bride-to-be probably would think her party more important than such an inconvenience as the safety of her guests.

In any case, storm happens, and police detective and part-time sous-chef Gray decides that the party must be evacuated. Dani is told to stay in the mobile kitchen. Which she doesn’t because she tipped the event-planner about the pianist. As if Gray and Spencer would only evacuate the party guests but leave the piano player be. It’s been a long time since the Titanic. These days ALL people are evacuated. Musicians are not expected to play on to calm the nerves of the guests.

I was enjoying the story up to that point, but stupid surprise storm and stupid behaviour by main character broke the spell. Though, in fairness, if a storm can pull an anchored tent from the ground, a mobile kitchen probably isn’t the safest place either.

As quickly as the storm came, it is gone, and while Gray and Spencer get on the phone to call emergency services, Dani dives into the wreck to try and find the piano player. She helps a few other people along the way, but the piano player is her main concern.

Then the body of Yvette, the bride-to-be, is found and the police decide to detain everyone that is still on site (many people have already left, among them Dani’s staff), tell them not to talk to each other and confiscate their phones. So they can’t even get some legal advice about their rights in a situation like that.

Apparently, these people are detained because they were helping people out of the wreckage. “Police do not trust altruism as a motive,” Spencer says. What a pessimistic worldview. Strangest about the reasoning that the killer can be found among the people that dove willingly into the wreckage is: police seem to think that someone did not only use this incident to their advantage (to kill someone), but after that decided to stick around until the place was crawling with police, rather than make a quiet exit at the earliest opportunity.

I’m not much impressed with the competence of the police. When Dani feeds Gray some gossip about the prenup between Yvette and Franklin, Gray says: ”Interesting that Mr. Whittaker never mentioned that to us.” Huh? Did he have reason to mention it? For instance, because you asked? And please, a little skepticism towards people discussing the contents of contracts they are not a party in. Not to mention, that Whittaker is probably so rich that a couple of million dollars doesn’t give him a motive.

This is the first book I read in the Chef-to-Go series. I’m not sure what to think of Dani. I know I don’t like Spencer. He got a page and a half to reflect on a fight between two students, which was about a page of synonyms for testosteron driven idiots more than I could stomach. But mainly, I don’t like his ethics.

Dani and Spencer discus the memorial service Whittaker is planning for Yvette. He was assured the body would be release in time. To which Spencer comments: If I was the officer in charge, I’d want to keep the vic until I had the perp. Well, it’s a good thing the police don’t get to decide when a body is released after autopsy, because keeping the victim until you have the murderer is unethical. Some crimes take a lot of time to solve (if they are solved at all) and all that time the bereaved are denied their right to make funeral arrangements for their loved one and morn properly. That simply isn’t right. Re-examination of the body after a suspect is found is not a good enough reason to keep a body. Perhaps if there were some doubts after the autopsy, but in this case the victim was killed by stabbing.

Ethics is the reason I’m not able to finish this story. When Gray is presented with a low quality film of the victim leaving a car with a man and that combined with some comments Dani overheard, he seems to think that is not enough to bring the man in for questioning. Rather, he goes ahead with a suggestion made by one of the others: that the victim’s fiancé should confront the suspected murderer and coax him into a confession. That too is wrong on so many levels, that I was not able to continue reading after that.

I read a ARC through NetGalley.

This series is just not for me. It is too slow paced. And I don’t care for conversations where all the speaking is interrupted by descriptions of what everyone is doing while talking. It breaks up the speed of the conversation, creating pauses where there probably are none.

The plot of the murder is typical cozy: unlikeable person gets killed by something that was in his drink. A few people have been seen fixing drinks or walking around with drinks not for themselves. There’s the list of suspects. A few other people are thrown in for suspicious behaviour or for not having an alibi.

As readers we can easily discount half these people, because they are friends and family. For the same reason, it’s easy for us to pinpoint the mastermind.

In all, not a very exciting read.

I read an ARC through Netgalley.

All throughout reading this book, I felt as if there was something missing. A connection with Val, emotion in the narrative. I think this story may have worked better for me if it had been first person narrative rather than third person. As it was, I wasn’t much engaged in the story and reading it felt a bit like a chore.

2.5 stars, rounded down to 2 because Granddad apparently already knew who the killer was, but went on a stake-out with Jewel anyway.

I read an ARC through NetGalley.