Friday, 27 November 2020

Book ~ "Meet Your Baker" (2014) Ellie Alexander

From Goodreads ~ Welcome to Torte -a friendly, small-town family bake shop where the treats are so good that sometimes it's criminal.

After graduating from culinary school, Juliet Capshaw returns to her quaint hometown of Ashland, Oregon, to heal a broken heart and help her mom at the family bakery. The Oregon Shakespeare Festival is bringing in lots of tourists looking for some crumpets to go with their heroic couplets. But when one of Torte's customers turns up dead, there's much ado about murder.

The victim is Nancy Hudson, the festival's newest board member. A modern-day Lady Macbeth, Nancy has given more than a few actors and artists enough reasons to kill her ... but still. The silver lining? Jules' high school sweetheart, Thomas, is the investigator on the case. His flirtations are as delicious as ever and Jules can't help but want to have her cake and eat it too. But will she have her just desserts? Murder might be bad for business but love is the sweetest treat of all.

Juliet (aka Jules) was raised in small town Ashland, OR, but dreamed of seeing the world.  She grew up helping her parents in their bakery and went on to culinary school.  She got a job with a cruise line and didn't get home often after that.  She met her husband, Carlos, an executive chef, on a cruise and things were going well until she discovered his secret.

With a broken heart, she headed home to figure things out.  In the meantime, she started working in the family bakery.  Ashland is a small theatre town which attracts a lot of tourists because of the Shakespearean plays they put on.  When one of the directors of the theatre is found dead in the bakery, anyone could be the murderer because the director was so disliked.

This is the first in the Bakeshop Mystery series and I liked it.  I recently finished reading this author's Sloan Krause Series and like them so thought I'd check this series out. It's written in first person perspective in Jules' voice.  There is a lot of talk about baking and there are lots of recipes at the end, which sound delicious.   It was a quick light read and is a "cozy mystery" so there is no swearing, violence or adult activity. I look forward to reading the rest in this series.

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