Maymee Bell
Book Blurb:
Bucolic Rumford, Kentucky has glowing fields of bluegrass, a fine selection of bourbons, and now a professional pastry chef. Broken-hearted Sophia Cummings has come home from New York City. She’s not there a minute before she’s charmed into making her high school friend Charlotte’s wedding cake. The kitchen at the Rumford Country Club seems perfect until Chef Emile’s body is discovered, sprawled near the stove, a cast iron skillet on the floor close by.
With one look at the shiny, new frying pan, Sophia knows it’s not Emile’s. She offers her knowledge to Sheriff Carter and her talents to Evelyn, the manager, who needs an interim chef. The mood in the country club is grim: Emile’s peppery personality had burned members and staff alike. Sophia wonders which one of them burned him?
A few of the errors are logic flaws; events happen in the book that don't make sense. A few examples include the protagonist, Sophia, not knowing that one of her best friends from high school was getting married. Was she not invited to her best friend's wedding? Why did her mother not bother to mention it? Another good friend is a member of an expensive, exclusive country club while struggling to have enough money to buy a new car (which, incidentally, would be a business expense). And there's the 'clue' about the new frying pan, that doesn't ever seem to go anywhere.
And then there are a few errors that seem like someone only half edited the book. For example, in one sentence, Sophia hands the corkscrew to another character. A few sentences later, she's looking for a corkscrew to open the bottle. A few pages later, they climb into the car and clean up the kitchen. In another section, Sophia is talking to the town mechanic - someone who's not related to her or her family - who refers to Sophia's father as 'Daddy'. In one scene, the chair she's in is pushed against the wall, and then a paragraph later, under the desk. None of these errors pulled me out of the book, so to speak, although a few left me giggling (a kitchen big enough to drive the car in?!?).
Despite these flaws, I enjoyed the book. I liked the characters, and I loved reading about all the goodies Sophia was dreaming up. And she was a likable character, so it was nice to see things work out for her. The mystery was pretty straight forward, I thought (Mild Spoiler: one character kept popping up, giving suggestions of people who might be guilty), although not at the Scooby-Doo level (where the cast of character is Scooby and the gang, a friend, and the guilty party).
I'm looking forward to the sequel, scheduled to be published in December, 2018.
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