Book 89, 2021

Live and Let Pie by Ellie Alexander

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Yesterday, I brought my book home from work to finish the final two chapters. It was Live and Let Pie by Ellie Alexander, and it's the 9th installment in the "Bakeshop mystery" series. This is the first I've read in the series, but I did not feel as though I was floundering to keep up. The main character is Juliette "Jules" Capshaw who, along with her mother, owns and runs the bakeshop Torte.

With renovations at Torte almost complete, Jules is looking to hire more staff to help out in their expanded space. She's also been helping her mother look for a new house. On one such excursion to the lake, Jules is enjoying the beach when two young girls retrieve a skull from the bottom of the lake. The remains are identified as those of a local who had disappeared decades earlier. His death is ruled a homicide, and Jules can't help but be intrigued by the cold case. Things heat up when another local is murdered, presumably in an altercation regarding the property he was offering for sale. Jules is convinced the two crimes are connected, and it's going to take some serious sleuthing to put the pieces together.

I enjoyed this story. It's set in Ashland, OR, which seems like a quaint and cozy town...at least on the surface. Characters were fleshed-out and believable, and the narrative proceeded in a sensible fashion. The story wasn't consumed with the investigation--Jules spent plenty of time on the job, and I nearly drooled over the wonderful array of items being baked/cooked/made for sale at Torte. There was also the subplot of some friction between an old employee and a new one, the ongoing contention over Edgar's property, the house-hunting, and Jules' own concern over her relationship with her (off-screen) husband.

Favorite lines:
♦ "People don't want revolting pastries."
♦ "There's nothing as ambrosial as a slow drive through the countryside."
♦ "I have it on good authority that the pastry muse strikes you at the most random and inconvenient times."

A delightful story, and I will certainly look for more in this series. Four stars!