Mousse and Murder by Elizabeth Logan (Book Beginnings & Friday56)

 

Title: Mousse and Murder

Author: Elizabeth Logan

Publication: 5 May 2020

Format: paperback

Amazon Description

A young chef bites off more than she can chew when she returns to her Alaskan hometown to take over her parents’ diner. 

When Chef Charlotte “Charlie” Cooke was offered the chance to leave San Francisco and return home to Elkview, Alaska, and take over her mother’s diner, she didn’t even consider saying no. For the past year, she’s built a comfortable existence, spending her days making sure the restaurant runs smoothly and that her cat, Eggs Benedict, is appropriately pampered. But soon life at the diner starts feeling a little one-note.

Determined to bring fresh life and flavors to the Bear Claw Diner, Charlie starts planning changes to the menu, which has grown stale over the years. But her plans are fried when her head chef, Oliver turns up dead after a bitter and public fight over Charlie’s ideas—leaving Charlie as the prime suspect. 

With her career, freedom, and life all on thin ice, Charlie must find out who the real killer is, before it’s too late.

Ramble-y Teaserish Stuff

I started to read this -- super freaking excited because it would check off so many challenge boxes : 

• M title
• L author 
• Cozy Mystery 
• Cozy Mystery set in Alaska -- which ticks off the Literary Escapes and a Craving for Cozies mini-challenge

and then the real challenge began.

The setting, of course, is Alaska -- the place "we" have talked about running away to for years. 

The main character has more than a bit of a crush on a guy she knew since high school (yep) ... who happens to share the first name of my ... well ... whatever he is right now. The other half of "we."

In case you haven't picked up on it over the past month or so of posts : something is rotten in the state of Denmark ... if, of course, my life was actually Denmark. 

Here I thought on Tuesday that Kim Nash was the one trying to kill me. 

So ... I set the book aside. 

(Okay, so I actually threw it across the hotel lobby with quite a bit of gusto.)

I grabbed a random cozy off of Libby that would also tick off multiple challenge boxes (easy to do the first week of the year, after all), and debated just letting Mousse and Murder rot indefinitely. I started A Dash of Death in time for it to be included in this week's WWW Wednesday as the "Currently Reading" and it was fine. Nothing horrible or extraordinary, but I really didn't care who killed who. About the 75% mark I realized that my mind kept drifting to good ol' Elkview, Alaska. 

Sure, it's going to be a painful read in some ways but in the first couple of chapters (plus the pulling of blips for today's post), I had already become more invested and interested in what was going to happen than in the first 75% of the other. May just be bad timing. Or the fact that I'm still hoping that some day we'll run away to Alaska ... and that there's even a "we" to run.

Not really a book review, right? 

Well, the heading for this section is, after all, "Ramble-y Teaserish Stuff" and I've definitely covered the Ramble-y ... so now to the Teaserish. Once I knock out the last 25% of the other book I'll dive back in to this one and, hopefully, do a more proper review on Goodreads or Amazon or wherever. Maybe it'll end up being so frickin' blip-worthy that it also ends up being an I'll Sleep When I've Read... post on Sunday. I don't sleep much right now so it's entirely possible.

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Friday 56 (share a blurb from the 56th page or 56% mark) is hosted at Freda's Voice 

& Book Beginnings (share the first few sentences) is at Rose City Reader