Murder is Never Sweet, Especially at Christmas
I am completely enjoying Cathy Wiley’s Fatal Food Festival Mysteries. So I was thrilled when I saw that she was slipping in a Christmas mystery this year. Naturally, I made time to read I’ll Bee Home for Christmas before the holiday.
The series features Jackie Norwood, a former celebrity chef who lost her TV show when her drinking got out of control. Now, she’s trying to mount a comeback by being a guest judge at food festivals across the country. Sadly, she seems to find herself involved in murders at each festival she visits.
It’s the second week of December, and Jackie and her friends are descending on Oklahoma for a honey festival. Jackie’s cameraman, Greg, connected her to the judging gig since his sister, Emily, is putting everything together. Jackie arrives a couple of days early to get acclimated and help set things up. Part of that is going with Emily while she visits her beehives.
However, at one of their stops, they discover the dead body of Emily’s ex-husband. He was obviously in the process of stealing her hives, which gives her a motive. As Jackie jumps in, she finds plenty of others who hated the man. But can she find the killer?
As I said earlier, I’m really loving the characters and their growing relationships. There are some continuations of these arcs from the earlier books, especially the previous one. As a result, I recommend you read these books in order.
And if you have been, you’ll be happy with what happens here. I’m already looking forward to seeing how these events impact the characters going forward. And the new characters we met along the way were also great.
Authors who write cozies have a balancing act trying to bring in the theme while also keeping the mystery moving forward. I felt like this book missed the mark in the middle, looking at bit more at the festival and the contests that Jackie is judging. As a result, I felt like a couple things were rushed story wise. That’s not to say that the climax didn’t make sense. It logically followed the clues that Jackie and the rest had uncovered.
Part of the reason I love this series is the humor. Yes, there is one character who loves his puns, which I appreciate. But there are some other great laughs from the characters and their relationships.
The book does have lots of food talk with some very delicious sounding recipes featuring honey. We get a lot of recipes at the end, and all the best sounding dishes in the story are included. By my count, we have a total of seven recipes at the end.
And yes, there are also some fun nods to Christmas over the course of the book, as well.
All told, I’ll Bee Home for Christmas is a sweet addition to the series. Fans will be thankful for it. If you haven’t started it yet, I definitely recommend you do so today.
Travel to the rest of the Fatal Food Festival Mysteries.
NOTE: I received an ARC of this book.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Thanks for stopping by. In order to combat spam, I moderate most comments. I'll get to your comment as soon as I can.