Title: The Rocky Road to Ruin
Author: Meri Allen
Publication: 27 August 2021
Format: Kindle ebook
Amazon Description
Riley Rhodes, travel food blogger and librarian at the CIA, makes a bittersweet return to her childhood home of Penniman, Connecticut – land of dairy farms and covered bridges - for a funeral. Despite the circumstances, Riley’s trip home is sprinkled with reunions with old friends, visits to her father’s cozy bookshop on the town green, and joyful hours behind the counter at the beloved Udderly Delicious Ice Cream Shop. It feels like a time to help her friend Caroline rebuild after her mother’s death, and for Riley to do a bit of her own reflecting after a botched undercover mission in Italy. After all, it’s always good to be home.
But Caroline and her brother Mike have to decide what to do with the assets they’ve inherited – the ice cream shop as well as the farm they grew up on – and they’ve never seen eye to eye. Trouble begins to swirl as Riley is spooked by reports of a stranger camping behind the farm and by the odd behavior of the shop’s mascot, Caroline’s snooty Persian, Sprinkles. When Mike turns up dead in the barn the morning after the funeral, the peace and quiet of Penniman seems upended for good. Can Riley find the killer before another body gets scooped?
The second book in this series is due out next month and has been sitting on my NetGalley shelf for a while now so I figured now would be a good time to finally read the first. I am so ridiculously behind on my NetGalley reads and I hate that ... but I'm working on it and will eventually catch up. Or not. Whatever.
When I first read the description for this and saw that the main character, Riley, was a librarian for the CIA, my brain immediately went to Culinary Institute of America. Nope. Not that CIA. The other CIA. It gives an added oomph of suspiciousness and paranoia and angst to the character that made this cozy a bit less predictable than I was originally expecting.
It's full of delightful (and not so delightful) characters and descriptions and sooooo much food ... and ice cream! It has kept me guessing from the get-go which is a rare treat from a cozy. Almost as rare as sunflower ice cream (which I really really would like to get my hands on).
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Friday 56 (share a blurb from the 56th page or 56% mark) is hosted at Freda's Voice
1 comment:
If Penniman really exists like that, I bet it is beautiful. Sounds like a sweet read! Happy weekend!
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