Restaurant Weeks Are Murder (A Poppy McAllister Mystery)
Cozy Mystery
3rd in Series
Kensington (February 26, 2019)
Mass Market Paperback: 304 pages

Synopsis

Cape May, New Jersey, is the site of a big culinary competition—and the knives are out . . .

Poppy McAllister is happy about opening a Jersey Shore B&B—but working in a professional kitchen has always been her real dream. Now it’s coming true, at least briefly, as she teams up with her former fiancée, Tim—and his condescending partner, Gigi—during the high-profile Restaurant Week challenge. Poppy’s specialty is pastries, despite her devotion to a Paleo diet. But if anyone can make glorious gluten-free goodies, it’s Poppy.

Things get heated quickly—especially when some ingredients get switched and Tim’s accused of sabotage. Relatively harmless pranks soon escalate into real hazards, including an exploding deep fryer. And now one of the judges has died after taking a bite of Poppy’s cannoli—making her the chef suspect . . .

Includes Seven Recipes from Poppy’s Kitchen!

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Review

I seriously love this series…I don’t know what it is about the characters or the setting (maybe it is the recipes), but I can’t wait to read these books as they are released!

Poppy is an engaging protagonist.  A mistake in her youth altered her future but she seems to be doing ok trying to get a B&B off the ground, baking gluten-free items for a coffee shop, and solving the murders that happen in her town.  It doesn’t hurt that she has two potential love interests – Gia, the owner of the coffee shop and a hot Italian and Tim, her college sweetheart who owns a local restaurant.  I am team Gia – just putting that out there – because, while Tim wants to be with Poppy, he lets himself get distracted by GiGi and other women.  Anyway, you can make your own decision on which team to belong.

I love to cook (which may be why this series appeals to me) and this one brings together cooking with reality TV.  Poppy teams up with Tim and Gigi to represent Tim’s restaurant in a cooking competition.  Gigi is not likable and she gets her due many times throughout the book.  I think my favorite is when the network decides that anyone on the team must cook one of the courses.  This infuriates Gigi because she doesn’t think Poppy is a chef because she didn’t attend culinary school.  Gigi is in for a rude awakening because not all great cooks have attended cooking school and Poppy knows her way around a kitchen which is more than can be said for Gigi.  As is to be expected, there is murder during the show and Poppy has to figure out the killer before she becomes the next victim.  I really tried to decipher the clues but I did not do a good job because I was quite surprised to learn who the murderer was and the reasoning behind the death(s).

There is a cast of quirky characters that liven up the storyline and of course, we can’t forget Aunt Ginny and her antics along with the rest of her Senior friends.  She knows how to liven up this book with her shenanigans.

We give this 5 paws up and suggest reading the whole series starting with the first book so you can understand the back story.

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