I found it hard to connect to Ivy. The strange thing is, it was because she was the only one that seemed to care that the hotel's chef had not accidentally contaminated the food of a highly allergic hotel guest.

Ivy does a lot of introspection, about her past, her panic attacks, who had means, motive and opportunity to kill Ms Swain. It makes this mystery dark and heavy-handed. Not really my thing, I prefer the lighter cozies, where means, motive and opportunity are discussed with one or several friends.

Interesting theme though, that Ivy tries to find out more about her mother by working at the house that was once owned by her family.

I read an ARC through NetGalley.

Once again, a book and I are not off to a good start. When Tessa Esposito is making tomato sauce for her soon to open restaurant she uses garlic powder. Garlic powder? I guess she’s not a fresh produce only type of chef. I continue, muddle through the exposition of the first chapter. I haven’t read the first in the series, but really, I don’t need to be brought up to speed. Not completely anyway. Some character background can be saved until the character whose background is exposed actually makes an appearance.

Second chapter, a bunch of unlikable characters enter Gabby’s bookshop and the scene. Do people like this actually exist outside of fiction? Tessa turns out to have a knack for walking around and overhearing other people’s conversations. And there’s some misogyny, from Tessa. In the same paragraph she remembers that Lorenzo told his mother he never wants to work, she gets upset with Daphne that she is using Lorenzo. Surely, if a guy thinks he can get by in life solely on his looks, you can’t really blame a woman for not thinking him serious relationship material.

There’s a distinct lack of subtlety in the narration. Gabby is busy putting cannoli on a serving dish and suddenly wonders where her keys are. Tessa puts her phone on the fridge after sending a text. With such attention to detail you would not expect Tessa to forget where she put her phone down. But she does. The misplaced phone and keys become a plot point later on. Well, the misplaced phone does. The keys are not mentioned again and Gabby locks up for the night, so I guess she found ‘m all right. Until the next morning, when Tessa remembers where her phone is and Gabby can’t find the key to the bookshop on her key ring.

This is not the mystery of the strangely appearing and disappearing key, though. With a spare key, Tessa lets herself into the backroom of the bookshop, finds her phone and a cannolo on the ground. For some reason, rather then pick it up and throw away, she decides to tread carefully into the bookshop proper, where she finds more cannoli and the body of Daphne. EMTs and local police are quick on the scene. Gino, local detective and Gabby’s brother, asks Tessa some questions and deduces this doesn’t look good for Gabby. Shouldn’t that also be the point where he decides he should take himself off the case? Surely he can’t investigate a crime where a family member is a prime suspect?

Ah, yes, he can’t. After questioning his sister and cousin he tells them he will be taken off the case. A little late, I think. He’ll probably get an ear full about that at the station, ‘cause a good lawyer could use that to their advantage. Gino also tells Gabby and Tessa that they are both suspects, because they were at the bookshop the previous night. I guess that makes the 50 plus people that came to the shop for the book signing also suspects.

This bothers me for a number of reasons. (1) Daphne was found dead in a bookshop. Her death is suspicious, but it has not yet been established as a crime. Therefor, it’s too early to call anyone a suspect. (2) To call someone a suspect, the police must have a reasonable suspicion someone did something wrong. Tessa is apparently a suspect because she made vanilla cannoli and on the floor next to Daphne are chocolate flavoured cannoli. Personally, I don’t think that is a reasonable suspicion. (3) Aside from the presumption of innocence (which doesn’t seem to exist in cozy mysteries anyway), calling someone a suspect too soon, rather than a witness, could hamper the investigation. Suspects have reason to lawyer up and claim their right to remain silent. Witnesses have less reason to do so.

Perhaps Gino was just protecting his sister and cousin and advising them to go see a lawyer as soon as possible. But then it would have been helpful if he had just said that, rather than call them suspects prematurely. As it is, neither woman brings a lawyer when they go to the police station for their statement / questioning. Ugh, some brother he is.

Tessa’s interview with Detective Padraic McDermott would have gone a lot different with a lawyer present. Lot’s of ‘don’t answer that question’ and ‘are you asking my client to speculate?’ I think both I and Tessa would have enjoyed the interview more had she brought a lawyer. As it is, Tessa is left to think McDermott is a jerk that wants to quickly stitch her up.

Gino and Lou, Gabby’s cop boyfriend, are both taken off the case because of their relationship with Gabby, but both have no qualms about sharing police information (such as autopsy results) with the two ‘suspects’, or giving them ideas about who to talk to. Both also tell Gabby and Tessa that Paddy will handle it. (As a side note: Detective McDermott didn’t seem like the type to appreciate to be called by a nickname by co-workers.)

So, Gabby and Tessa go and talk to a few people they think had reason to kill Daphne. They manage to ruffle a few feathers. Not least of which, mine. As I was slowly getting irritated with the misogyny from the main character, a rock is thrown through Gabby’s window, nearly knocking Tessa in the head. Gabby calls Lou and he immediately draws the conclusion that the broken window is related to the murder case and therefore ‘Paddy will handle it.’ Not that Paddy is actually called in to come and look at the note and the rock it was attached to. So he can make a decision whether the threat is related to his murder case.

No, not much impressed by Lou’s cop skills. Nor his ‘helping out his girlfriend skills’. If he had wanted to help Gabby and Tessa, he should have treated the initial investigation of the rock through the window as an incident separate to Daphne’s murder. It could have been an in for him to investigate the murder case, if Paddy were to reject the notion that the rock through Gabby’s window was related to the murder case. (Easy enough for him to dismiss. The jerk-kind of detective always do.) Missed opportunity there.

There’s a few things I dislike in cozy mysteries. One is dumb cops/detectives the other is criminal behaviour in sleuths. This story has a sleuth that can actually be accused of planting evidence.

Spoiler

Under false pretenses Gabby and Tessa manage to get access to the house of the Rigotta family where they search the kitchens for some expensive chocolate. Tessa finds this chocolate, takes a picture of it and puts it down on the shelf. Effectively having put her finger prints on the evidence. How is she going to explain that one in court?

Later on she steals someone’s mail.

It was then I started counting how many more pages until I reach the end of this story. The resolve was interesting though. I’m actually interested in knowing how this story would have gone if had followed Detective McDermott in his investigation. Sure, he was made out to be a jerk, but he must have been competent, because if he had really wanted to stitch up Gabby, he would have been talking to Gabby way more often than he actually did.

I read an ARC through NetGalley.

Six weeks after opening - after many months of renovations - Antonia is very pleased her inn and restaurant are attracting a nice client base. Then one of her guests tells her that many of the previous owners of the inn have died suddenly. Antonia tries to shrug this off, but then strange things start to happen around her. She decides she must find out who killed the previous owner, before she is killed herself.

There is a long-running program on Dutch television that is called Ik Vertrek (I’m leaving) where people are followed that decide to turn their whole life upside down, move to another country and start a hotel, B&B or restaurant. Antonia could have been a participant in that program; she shares many of the qualities with the actual participants:
- moves to another country ==> Antonia moved to another state across country, so check;
- is ill prepared and/or bought a property sight unseen ==> Antonia bought the property unseen and on the suggestion of her friend Genevieve whom she later calls immature, check;
- has no experience whatsoever running a hotel/camping site/B&B ==> She has some experience as a caterer, but mainly phantasies about how to run in inn, check;
- the property needs a lot of renovation work ==> check;
- the set opening date is rather optimistic considering the state of the property ==> Antonia had to move her opening date and lost the lucrative summer season, check;
- in the end it all turns out well ==> check.

Whereas the program on TV is always a bit uncomfortable to watch, a train wrack waiting to happen, the participants are usually so charming in their naivety that you actually want them to succeed. Not so much with Antonia. She was so sure of herself that at some point I started cheering for any mishap to come her way. Or maybe it was because she was plain dumb. If you’re five foot five and your ceilings are high and a lightbulb needs to be replaced, it’s not a joke if you ask a taller person with a better ladder to do it for you. That is actually a smart move as most accidents happen around the house when people stand on rickety ladders and over-reach to change a lightbulb. (The ladder, apparently, is about the only thing Antonia did not buy new when she started refurbishing her inn.)

I didn’t like Antonia much, didn’t like the side characters much, didn’t like the mystery much. When Antonia is changing the lightbulb, she manages to pull her self up off the ladder and someone moves the ladder. There can only be a limited number of people who could have moved the ladder, but Antonia doesn’t investigate (which is rather odd considering the tenacity with which she decides to investigate Gordon’s death). It annoyed me that Antonia never talks to Lucy and Connie about what it was like for them to work with Gordon. Another investigative angle lost.

In the end Antonia gathers all the suspects and other useful characters in a room and discloses who the murderer is. Where some clues are shared that were previously hidden from the reader. I always hate that. Particularly in a book that is rather overdescriptive.

I read an ARC through NetGalley.

After a wild night out and finding out her husband cheated on her, Emory becomes a murder suspect. Not really surprising, she seems a bit dense. Somewhere around the time she found a hickey on her neck after a night out with her best friend Tori, I started to suspect her friend was setting her up. Not Emory. After finding Tori in an intimate pose with her husband, rolling on the lawn with her fighting and make reciprocal threats, she still seems to think her friend will help her out when she can’t log in to Facebook.

So she goes over to Tori’s apartment to get the Facebook problem sorted. Even if this wasn’t the afternoon after the morning before, it would have been quicker to just click “forgot password”. And if that didn’t work, to contact Facebook about her account being hacked. (I’m sure it happens; likely they have a policy.) Tori doesn’t answer the door and Emory lets herself in with a key Tori gave her. That’s when she finds the body of Tori.

From what we learn later about Tori, it seems odd that she would have given a house key to Emory. Or perhaps she thought Emory as clueless as her upstairs neighbours do and saw no harm in giving her a key.

Emory calls emergency and from that moment on starts asserting to anyone that might hear that she didn’t do it. That’s before anyone has accused her of anything. That seems a strange reaction, but it becomes clear once her mother and sister enter the story. Both these women have a habit of immediately assuming Emory is at fault when something bad happens. That sort of loved ones have got to be bad for a person’s self-esteem.

Emory decides she must prove she is innocent, because she is sure she’s a convenient suspect to pin the murder on. While she rushes around she picks up a useful clue here and there, plus a diverse list of crimes Tori might have been involved in. But rather than think that Tori’s criminal affairs caught up with her, Emory suspects one of her husband’s other lovers has killed Tori. And I’m left thinking what is so attractive about the husband that multiple single, independent women fall for this married guy. His attraction doesn’t come off the pages.

I didn’t like this book much. There is some merit to the plot, but it lacked focus. I found most of the characters to be either unrealistic or unpleasant, except for the older police chief that first arrested Emory and Tilly. The introduction of Tilly completely took the speed out of this book, but I guess it was a nice set up to have a sidekick for Emory in the next Cupcake Catering Mystery.

I read an ARC through NetGalley.

I’m on the fence on how to rate this book. I liked it until about the last 30 pages. Then the murderer did something that can best be described as standing up and shouting “Well, hello, it’s me. Haven’t you figured that out yet?” I don’t like murderers that draw attention to themselves like that.

Hayley Snow, the food critic in series title, is a bit worked up: her mother-in-law is coming for an unexpected visit and she hasn’t met the woman yet (?!) Apparently, Mrs Bransford had reasons not to attend her son’s wedding. She’s cold and keeps her distance, until Hayley and she discover the dead body of a pastry chef on her porch. Helen Bransford becomes an active investigator and Hayley can’t help to keep up.

The pastry chef was new in town and caused a bit of a raucous at a presentation for a key lime pie contest. Hayley is writing about the contest for Key Zest magazine and figures one of the other contestant or the organiser is the murderer, because the new chef was too much competition in a town that already had too many bakers.

The story is well-written and pretty well plotted. I just didn’t like the reveal of the murderer.

The book includes recipes and I’m thinking of trying one out.

I read an ARC through NetGalley.

Sawyer is settling into her life as a bookstore owner and responsible adult for her fifteen-year-old stepsister. Local girl that made it big as an author visits town and does a book singing. She’s brought her husband Zane, who broke up with Sawyer’s best friend Renee years ago. At the end of the afternoon, Zane is found in Renee’s walk-in freezer with a head wound. Renee herself is nowhere to be found.

Slowly, the evidence stacks up against Renee, but Sawyer can’t believe her best friend would hurt her ex and becomes convinced Renee is being framed. With the help of her step-sister who turns out to have kick-ass computer skills and members of her book club, Sawyer sets out to prove Renee’s innocence.

I can’t say I liked this story. The plot was alright. There is a bit too much of Sawyer's thoughts giving commentary that take the show out of many scenes.

It’s the people in it that bothered me. Madge and the Admiral are caricatures. Brittany seems too much like a normal fifteen-year-old (with her teenage tantrums) for someone that has been taking care of themselves from a young age. She learned hacker skills while living on the street and used to scam predators. I would have expected more trust issues and defiance of authority.

And most of all I disliked Dylan constantly pulling Sawyer in and then pushing her away again. Maybe if he’d stop running away from his problems, she’d stop trying to fix them for him. Can’t say I see what she sees in him, but apparently betrayed trust doesn’t make people skeptic in this story.

Thematically, there is a lot in this story that would fit right into a psychological thriller, but because this is a cozy, only the surface of the issues was scratched. Too bad.

Final note: this book is the second in the series and contains spoilers to the first book.

I read an ARC through NetGalley.

Sammy, owner of Community Crafts, is very excited about the special exhibit she has thought of for Fire and Ice the first big event of the new year in Heartsford. Live mannequins are going to sit in her window display. Her excitement is quickly quelled when Wanda dies while sitting in the window.

It turns out Wanda was poisoned and when Wanda’s husband Marty disappears, Sammy, her sister Ellie and cousin Heidi can’t help but investigate. Particularly after Ellie’s husband becomes a person of interest.

So far so good, but it was a struggle to get through this story.

I don’t care much for Sammy as a person. She rambles on when she asks a question (how is anyone going to be able to answer you if you don’t pause long enough for them to speak) and I particularly don’t care about her opinion her sister should get a dog for her son. That particularly rubbed me the wrong way. I also don’t like how she coerces her sister and cousin to do things: “You want [his] blood on your hands[?]” “Do you want to get thrown in the slammer next to your husband?”

Actually, everyone is stupidly interrupting with “I don’t understand” statements, rather than let a person who understand the situation explain. This book is rather short, but could have been even shorter if people didn’t voice their ignorance so much.

What made this story laughable was when Sammy

Spoiler

gets kidnapped. The kidnapper first puts her in the backseat and ties her to the headrest. Later, he tie-wraps her wrists together and undoes her tie to the headrest. While he is in the driver’s seat driving the car. Through the snow. Then, when the kidnapper has both hands on the wheel and eyes on the road (presumably) he crashes into a snowbank.

I nearly did not finish this story, when even the detective asks a barrage of questions rather than let a person explain. But I’m glad I decided to read till the end. Because it explained how Wanda was killed.

Spoiler

Wanda, who is many times described as being a vegan and sticking strictly to her vegan diet, was killed eating some poisoned honey. That would have never happened if she really was a strict vegan.

1.5 stars rounded down to 1 for method of murder.

Chicklits work best if you like the main characters. The girl should be someone your recognise yourself in (to some degree) and the guy should be someone you could be attracted too.

I liked Polly until about the third chapter. Then she took a job to photograph food for an instagrammer's cookbook for free. What? She wants to make money as a photographer. She should not be giving her work away. An instagrammer's cookbook is likely to become an insta-hit. The instagrammer can afford to pay for the photos. And this turns out not to be the first time Polly is offering her services for free or very little on the promise that actual paying work will come out of it for her.

I wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shake her. Favours you do for friends; not for people you barely know.

So it's probably a good thing Polly gets offered the job as a matchmaker. She clearly doesn't have a very good commercial head. Which is further evidenced by the fact that her first job as a matchmaker is to find some good photos for a clients dating profile. How is it not the first thing (okay, maybe after a short scroll through the client's Facebook page) she tells her new boss: I'm a photographer! I can take very good professional pictures of this client. I can make him look desirable. (I don't know whether she can, but that's probably how she has to sell this thing to her new boss.)

Alas, no such action from Polly and my mind starts wandering to writing my own chicklit. One where the heroine is more kick-ass and in control (and still makes a mess of her love-life).

As for the love-interest: sorry, not for me. Not even for his age or the age-difference with Polly, but because he is a businessman that meets his clients with rolled up shirt-sleeves showing off his artwork. To me, that doesn't look very professional - neither the tattoos nor the rolled up sleeves. In business it's better to overdress (and I say that working for a company where the dress-code is very relaxed. Still, we roll down our sleeves when meeting clients.)

But aside from not liking the main characters much, there was also barely any romance between them. They meet a few times and Polly for some reason fancies Olly. The forth time they meet, Olly tells her he was chatting with her on behalf of a client, while she was chatting on behalf of a client of hers, and they decide they like each other and should go on a date. A date that is spent the whole night talking and not making out (kind of hard to believe if she really fancied him). Then her boss tells her Olly is a cad and Polly decides to believe hear-say rather than hear the other side and ignores Olly for a week or so until she learns he's quitting his company.

Everything is happening too fast. There's no build up of the romance. I don't see the back and forth attraction and the big fall-out (there always should be a fall-out; I guess that's what makes the relationship stronger in the end) is something that could have been sorted about by replying to a text. What do you mean 'big' fall-out? Pretty much everything I like in a chicklit was lacking.

What was also lacking - and I never knew this was going to be something I was going to notice - Polly only has one heart-to-heart conversation with a female friend. One (1!) in the entire story.

And one final gripe: there is absolutely no reason for this story to be set in New York. It might as well have been set in Manchester for all that it showed of Manhattan. Nothing, save for some name dropping. The story didn't even remark on winter in New York, even tough it is set in February. There was a distinct lack of people being cold or wearing wintercoats and gloves when outside. It also would have saved the author getting the time difference wrong. England is ahead of New York time. So when it's 4 a.m. in England, it's 11 p.m. in New York. I doubt that would be regular office hours for Polly.

1.5*, but rounding it down because of the last chapter. That was too much lessons learned.

I read a copy of this book through Netgalley.

Dull story. There is no tension.

The plot is fine: girl runs away to her aunt on idillic island to get away from cheating boyfriend. Aunt thinks of a way to give girl back her self-confidence (through an advent calendar filled with tasks).

But there was no build up; all the plot points were quickly resolved. From one conversation to the next the characters saw what they had been doing wrong. That made for a rather boring read and made it hard to engage with any of the characters.

I'm docking a full star for Holly overreacting when Finn had not opened the suitcase when he said to her he had. The man has been avoiding dealing with his grief for five years. Did she really think he was going to sort it all out the night she unlocked the suitcase for him? And she's supposed to be this deep and understanding creature?

I read an ARC through Netgalley.

Not really my sort of thing.

There are a few things I don't like in erotica. Among them are submissive relationships and sex with an employer or medical professional while you are their patient.

Two of these came up in this story. So, not my thing.

The story is written well-enough, so if these things are your kink, and you don't mind erotica that seems to be more male oriented than female oriented, you'll probably like this book better than I did.

I received a free copy of this book from BookSirens in exchange for a review.