Book 20, 2024

Muffins and Misdeeds by Sue Hollowell

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



I finished Muffins and Misdeeds by Sue Hollowell last night. It's the second in the "Belle Harbor" series of cozy mysteries, featuring wannabe-baker Tilly.

Tilly is getting used to the slower pace of life in Belle Harbor. Now that she's selling some of her baked goods at the local coffee shop, she's hoping that her fledgling baking business will take off. When a local distillery owner is murdered and suspicion falls on Tilly's new friend, Fiona, the two of them conspire to help the investigation along and clear Fiona's good name.

Well now. This one was as trite as the first, although at least we got to see our main character actually engaged in some amateur investigation. Characters were not portrayed especially well, and the mystery/investigation portion of the plot fell flat. It does not seem that writing mysteries is the author's forte. In addition, Ms Hollowell seems to have no concept of time. A vodka tasting event took about three minutes, and a kayaking date, perhaps 5-10 minutes. It's not that difficult to add a sentence or two that would indicate a stretch of time had passed to make scenes more plausible.

Favorite line: I didn't need to be caught in a middle-school drama.

"Breath" line: Once we had the cover of some trees I released a breath I didn't realize I had held.

Reads like it was written by a middle-school student. Two stars.