Bookstore Café #16
Bookstore café owner Krissy Hancock has her hands full. In addition to running her shop (Death by Coffee in Pine Hills, Ohio), she’s preparing for her wedding, and she and her best friend/co-owner Vicki are getting ready to open a second store in California. She’s also dealing with out-of-town guests and trying to find a baker to make her wedding cake.
Krissy and her fiancé Police Officer Paul Dalton have decided on a red velvet wedding cake (and red velvet lattes, as the title suggests), but they have not decided on a baker. They interview two competing local bakers who provide samples and resumes. The next morning when Krissy goes to the bakery to inform the winner, she finds both men dead, apparently after an epic fight that ended in mutual destruction. To make matters worse, just as Krissy picks up a rolling pin spattered with red velvet cake, an assistant baker walks in and assumes Krissy is the murderer.
Krissy sets out to solve the murder, which she has to balance with everything else that’s going on her life, which has just gotten more complicated with the arrival of her beloved father James Hancock and his girlfriend Laura Dresden from California. James, a mystery author whose first book inspire the café’s name, is recovering from health issues and brings news that a house Krissy always loved her home town is for sale. It’s near the new shop and near her dad but should she even consider moving, especially right now when when she’s trying to do so many things at once, on top of solving a crime? Did the bakers really kill each other? If not, who did? Why would someone kill either one of them? Who would benefit? Was one of the bakeries being sabotaged as its owner suspected? And who is going to make Krissy and Paul’s wedding cake on such short notice?
This the first book I have read in this series. I really like the setting and characters and read recaps of the previous books to make sure I understood the characters’ relationships. I was surprised Krissy and Paul would consider moving to California since all the previous books seem to be set in Ohio. As they admit to each other, they can always move back if they change their minds, but moving the setting would be an unusual option for future books. Given Krissy’s obsession with red velvet cake, red velvet lattes, and hot coffee over cookies, I was also surprised to see that recipes were not included at the end of the book.
If you like cozy bookstores and cafes with cats, coffee or tea, and small-town settings, this is the series for you. All the titles are coffee- or tea-related with at least one holiday-themed book (Death by Pumpkin Spice). – Cathy Akers-Jordan