I thought I’d give this series another go - ratings for books do go up as the series progresses and hopefully because the author is getting into the swing of things.

Because it’s the fifth in the series there is some recapping of previous books. I’ve only read the first in the series, and I still don’t care about the recap. Perhaps because the recap doesn’t just cover the fact that Felicity owns a bean to bar shop and Autumn is her bestie, but also that she’s solved four murders (only four, Felicity insists, as if solving one murder isn’t already remarkable enough). The opening chapters did feel like bragging. And not just where it comes to how many murders Felicity has solved: at one point she mentions the quality of Violet’s eye make-up, while seeing the woman from across the street.

Halfway through the second chapter I get the feeling that book one might have been better. As I was reading a rather pointless conversation between Felicity and her employee Carmen I started to wonder if the author was writing for word count. This is not a pleasant feeling.

Not only is Felicity constantly recounting her four previous murder investigations, it seems that also all the people and their pets she befriended during those times are showing up in this story.

I had to take this book in small dosages.

I have a feeling there is a good story in here, but the author hasn’t managed to get that out.

I read an ARC through NetGalley.

Omdat op de flaptekst stond “het bebloede lichaam van een meisje” dacht ik dat het om een thriller zou gaan waarin een kind is vermoord. Het bebloede lichaam is echter van een jonge vrouw. Misleidend.

Charlie is een reisinfluencer en post poëtische reisfoto’s op Instagram. Een tripje naar Vlieland past precies binnen haar blog, vindt althans haar man. Na aanvankelijke tegenzin - Charlie ziet de bootreis niet zitten - vindt ze een schilderworkshop en besluit toch te gaan.

Op de boot heeft ze een kort gesprek met twee vrouwen, waarvan er een enkele dagen later dood in haar tent gevonden wordt (het “meisje” van de flaptekst). Charlie besluit nog wat langer te blijven en zelf ook wat onderzoek te doen en op haar Instagram te posten over de negatieve kanten van reizen. Dit tegen de zin van haar man.

Uch, bij elk gesprek dat ze met haar man had, vroeg ik me af waarom ze die vent nog niet gedumpt heeft. Vijftien jaar samen is niet niks, maar hij is nogal bazig en praat de hele tijd over wat wel en niet moet van de adverteerders. Terwijl een influencer een ZZP’er is en als ZZP’er ben je vooral eigen baas.

Het eerste stuk vond ik het verhaal wel oké. Er waren wat storende foutjes. Zoals de inzet van een traumahelicopter om een stoffelijke overschot te vervoeren.

Na pagina 180 stort het verhaal in. Alleen in de nacht in een zware storm, een moordenaar op vrije voeten, het zou spannend moeten zijn. Het gestuntel van Charlie is vooral potsierlijk.

I was entertained, I wasn’t swept away.

Jasmine Bartlett has just lost her job (rather unfairly) and consequently her home and has to move back in with her parents. She receives an invite from her old friend Maxi for the holiday their group of friends always talked about, but never had.

Jasmine accepts, and so do the others. They were great friends in school, but after school the group fell apart, going to different universities or not to university at all.

There’re a nice bunch of people, except Clarky, who doesn’t seem to be concerned how his actions affect other people. But the rest of them are nice. Mainly proven by the fact none of them have ever strangled Clarky, or thrown him out of their group of friends.

The holiday is in a villa on a small island off the coast of Italy. While most of the group is content just lounging by the pool, Clarky wants more excitement. He books the group on a shipwreck experience, without telling anyone. When the group do find out - when the boat doesn’t come to pick them up after an afternoon of fun - no one suggest they eat Clarky first when they run out of food.

The story is set in the present, with some chapters set during key events during their time in school.

Mike gets a sort of personality make-over halfway through.

Mike’s always had a temper.

You can’t drop that information into the narrative at 60% of the story. Particularly not when there has been plenty of opportunity to show (did I mention no one ever hurt Clarky, or even lost their temper with him?) There’s some showing of Mike’s temper (or moodiness) after that, but the ‘always’ doesn’t sit right. His temper flares it very particular times.

I read an ARC through NetGalley.

Well-written, but other than the setting no real distinguishing features. I don't think I can tell this chocolatier apart from the baker I read about a few months ago.

An intelligent cozy mystery that definitely has me coming back for more.

Tanya Bowe a former investigative journalist, now vintage shop owner, is intrigued by the sudden death of a former school friend she just got re-acquainted with. Police have ruled the death an accident, but Tanya thinks there are still some loose ends.

Together with her eclectic bunch of friends, including long-time palls Roz an Ghita, new business partner Harry (a widower she fancies) and her step-son Mouse who moved in with her, Tanya starts digging for clues and secrets of the past.

The story is a bit foggy about the time-line, and it could definitely use a few more dialogue tags, but at least it doesn’t get bogged down in the details of Tanya’s day to day routine. I love Tanya’s witt and how she cares about her friends. I'm also very happy about the mature behaviour in regard to a romantic interest.

I read an ARC through NetGalley.

I love food themed cozy mysteries. And a book with four short stories is a great way to get to know four new authors.

The first story is about Mey, who was in an abusive relationship for four years until she became a Christian and that gave her the insights to leave. And she left good. Moved all the way to Maine from Texas. But now, her ex has found her and he wants her back.

She agrees to meet him for a talk the next morning, but the ex doesn’t show up. So she and her friend go to work at their food truck, where about an hour later a cop knocks on the door and points out a man - her ex - sitting at one of the tables outside her food truck. Dead.

You’d think they would have noticed him sitting there when they arrived. Hard to believe that they didn’t.

The story is just one hot mess of police behaving like total idiots. The cop at the food truck wastes no time to arrest Mey. The dead guy hasn’t even been moved to a stretcher yet. (I don’t think there’s even a forensic examiner at the scene. Mey wasn’t seen poking a big knife into her ex, so to arrest her seems rather premature.)

The detective on the scene has only slightly more sense. He say Mey is not under arrest, but before he starts taking statements, he lets Mey and Wei - his most likely eye-witnesses / persons of interest - bundle into a car to get their stories straight. Then leaves his crime scene to join the eye-witnesses / persons of interest for coffee and some snacks.

The detective asks a few questions then, mainly about how abusive the ex was. Then a week later returns to get a statement from Mey about the night the ex showed up. Never mind that the detective takes his prime suspect (for lack of other suspects, I am sure. The evidence against Mey is wafer thin.) with him to the motel the victim was staying.

I kept on reading because I had high hopes the story would be short. It is short. And bad, very, very bad. In lieu of an actual personality, Mey has her faith and her abuse stories. The cop and the detective are idiots. The murderer has a personality disorder (“He never lied to me.” “He lied to me all the time.”), and the wrap up - after the murderer has been caught - takes way, way too long. There was no mystery (other than how did this get published?) Not a good story to open a four story book with.

The second story features Angel, owner of Dream Donuts. Her second day of work starts badly: there’s a dead man behind her food truck and he’s holding a donut. The detective on duty is quick to make the connection between a dead donut eater and the donut vendor next to it. He is not so quick in securing his crime scene and collecting the evidence. Angel does a quick sweep of the perimeter and finds a knife that may have been used to frost the dead man’s donut.

I don’t frost, I glaze, she points out to the detective. To which the detective does not reply: the frosting knife is in front of you. He doesn’t even point out that any evidence she found can’t be used in her defence, or arrest her for tampering with evidence.

The detective sort of believes Angel that the frosted donut is not hers. At least, she’s not brought in for questioning. A lot of people around the food truck site think she had something to do with the death of the construction worker. When another construction worker (a guy Angel gets flutters around her heart from) is brought in for questioning, he and Angel decide to team up and find out what’s going on.

At first I thought the story was rushed, but that it held promise.

Then Angel and Jack decide to start breaking the law to dig up the dirt on his employer. And a whole bunch of other cozy clichés get thrown at them (and the reader). By that time, I wanted to rush through the story, ’cause every day and every scene started to look alike.

As a side note: it would have been nice if there had been some interaction between the characters of the different food trucks. In this story that didn’t go further than getting food from one of the trucks. And that didn’t always go right. At one point Angel is eating chow mein (a Chinese dish) which she supposedly got from the Lucky Noodle food truck, a food truck that serves Japanese food.

The third story features Shanice Williams, who started working at her grandfather’s food truck four months earlier. Lately, there have been rumours and complaints about the quality and hygiene of the food from his food truck. Her grandfather, Tater, suspects his best friend since childhood (Lyman) from starting this. The two men set up a meeting to talk it over, but after some bad news from the owner of the food truck plot, Tater decides to go walk-about and sends Shanice over in his place.

Shanice finds the body of Lyman. The next morning a police detective (yet another one than in the other food truck stories) informs her that Lyman was killed. His stomach contains a large amount of sleeping pills, mixed with the mash potatoes from his take-away. Naturally, Shanice and Tater are suspects.

This one has a pretty good mystery and many secrets are revealed during Shanice’s investigation. There are a few things that don’t add up, such as: why does Shanice have the same last name as her maternal grandfather? And if the police searched Lyman’s house, why did they not take the tape marked “my death sentence”?

Story four features Marissa Valdez, who runs the Crunchy Taco Food Truck after the death of her grandmother. Marissa has a lot on her plate: running the food truck, dealing with her grumpy cook, taking care of her younger brother (he’s a minor), preparing to be judged for a food competition and now the piece of land her grandmother wanted to buy to open up a restaurant has come up for sale.

The owner of the land likes Marissa’s plan for a restaurant and wants to sell her the property. This upsets the other interested party - who wanted to build a hotel - and also all the owners of Mexican themed restaurants. Now, they might have a point that Birch Tree is too small for four Mexican themed restaurants, but apparently it is not too small for three Mexican themed restaurants and a Mexican themed food truck. And rather than gloat that they are established restaurants and Marissa would be just starting out and do you know 50 percent of all businesses close again within five years, these restaurant owners make threats to Marissa to not even get started.

They’re a bit too caricatural for my taste.

Then the judge from the food contest dies after swallowing the first bite from the taco Marissa served her. Marissa is interviewed, but not arrested. Her food truck is deemed a crime scene, though, and this gives Marissa time to do her own investigation.

Strangely though, she does not go after the person that has been behaving the most suspiciously. As if that wasn’t eye-rolling enough, Marissa and her brother José decide to eavesdrop on their suspects because she “could not find any faults in his plan”. Completely missing the obvious one: you can wait a long time before people say anything of interest (without being prodded).

For a short story, this one took too long to get to the murder (actually, any mystery where it takes 40% of the story to get to the murder is off balance). And since I already knew who the murderer was going to be, it then also took too long to get to the resolve. Though in most cozies the murderer is someone the sleuth did not consider, it works better for the story if there aren’t any obvious reasons to suspect them.

As a side note, Marissa has a Mexican heritage. Unless I’m told otherwise I’m going to imagine her as catholic. She mentioned praying often, yet she never mentioned making the sign of the cross. She didn’t even mention making the sign of the cross when she kneeled next to the judge and realised that she was dead. A devout catholic would have made the sign of the cross.

In short: I liked only one of these stories. It is that story that saved this book from a one star rating from me.

I read an ARC through NetGalley.

Bit dull, particularly for the first halve of the book. Competently written, though.