This is the first book in a new series. I have to say that I really enjoyed it and I am looking forward to reading more in the future.

One glass of cheap California chardonnay cost Emory Gosser Martinez her husband, her job, and her best friend. Unfortunately, that was only the beginning of her troubles. She wakes up hungover (did she drink that much??) with a very revealing photo of her on Facebook.

When she goes to her best friends house she finds her having an affair with her husband. They have a physical altercation and Emory leaves. The problem is that the next time she sees her ex best friend she is dead. Emily is now the prime suspect.

Can Emory clear her name all while trying to get her life figured out???

This is the debut in the new cozy series "The Cupcake Catering Series" by cozy author Kim Davis. I loved this debut in this fun new cozy series . Thank you to the publisher and to Net Galley for the opportunity. My review opinions are my own,

we are introduced to our protagonist Emory who I liked right away. She has suffered the ultimate betrayal by her husband and her best friend. After she has a public meltdown the ex best friend puts a compromising internet photo of her online and Emory has now lost her job on top of losing her husband and best friend . When the ex bestie is murdered the police are not looking farther then Emory as the primary suspect. Amid baking to help her heal she must clear her name by solving the murder amid red herrings and clues that take her in unexpected directions and point toward her ex husband. She soon finds why someone may have wanted the victim murdered as she delves into her past.

I found Emory relatable and likable. The sleuth was very well crafted and kept me guessing. A successful first in series . I look forward to the next book of cupcakes and murder. Very well done to the author. Cross posted. Recipes are included which are truly divine.

Sprinkles of Suspicion by Kim Davis is the first book in the cupcake catering mystery, and I loved it and am looking forward to the next book in the series. Wow this cozy mystery took off with a bang. Emory Gosser Martinez wakes up at home, and she doesn't remember anything that happened the night before. She goes to her best friend, Tori, house to find out what happened. When she arrived she see's her husband and Tori canoodling on the couch. After a big fight between Tori and Emory, Tori takes revenge by posting a compromising photo of Emory. When Emory finds Tori dead, Emory becomes the prime suspect. I can't say enough good things about this book, and I highly recommend it, to anyone who enjoys a good cozy mystery.
I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

A cozy mystery. Realistic characters and situations. The author really took the time to study how people react in difficult situations. The storyline kept me guessing throughout, though I 'suspected' the villain of not being who the heroine thought they were, but didn't suspect them of doing in the victim. Not all the 'issues were resolved though the crime was solved. I will have to read more in the series to see how her new friendships develop.

Can you trust your best friend???
Emory Gosser Martinez and her best friend,
Tori go out one evening. But the next morning
when Emory wakes up she doesn’t remember
the evening or how she got home. She only
had one glasses of cheap California chardonnay.
What is happening?
Then Emory discovers a posting of a fake photo
of Emory in a compromising situation on social
media. Going to confront Tori, Emory discovers
her husband and Tori. Seems they have been
having a fling. Oh, boy what is Emory going to
do??
Next Emory is fired due to another fake photo
of her boss and Emory in a compromising
situation.
Off to Tori’s, Emory goes to have these photos
removed and gain access back to her own
social media accounts.
Only problem, no one answers at Tori’s.
Knowing where Tori’s extra key is kept, Emory
let’s herself inside. Going upstairs into the
bedroom, Emory trips over something. Better
yet someone, Tori is lying there DEAD having
been murdered.
So Emory, cupcake baker, ex-accountant,
doormat, naive person becomes the main
suspect for the murder. Who can she trust?
Who can she rely on after making the wrong
choice of best friend and husband??
So she begins her own investigation. During
this time Emory progresses out from her
innocence into a confident, decision making
character.
I thought this was a fast paced, gripping and
emotional read. The story offered a variety of
suspicious, quirky, intriguing and deceiving
characters. This provided me with enough
twists and turns to keep me glued until the end.
I enjoyed Emory’s family interaction especially
with her sister who did catering while Emory
provided free cakes and cupcakes. The food
described made my mouth water.
A beginning that will shock the reader leads
into a very well created, suspenseful, dramatic
and intriguing mystery for the reader to solve.
I enjoyed this book from the first to the last
page.
Recipes included at the end.
I volunteered to read Sprinkles of Suspicion.
This is book # 1 in the Cupcake Catering
Mystery series.
Thanks to the author via the Cozy Mystery
Review Crew for the opportunity. My opinion
is voluntary and my own.
A Net Gallery Read.

Since this is the first book in a new series it took me a while to get into the book but I really wound up enjoying it. I did feel that Tori was too naive to be totally believable but I like that she seemed to be learning to stand up for herself by the end of the book. I’m looking forward to reading the next book in the series.

This was an easy read, and although it was a murder mystery it was light-hearted. The only thing that put me off was that the main character was so clueless. Surely somebody cannot be that blind and gullible to what is going on! Also, sometimes the descriptions of the baking were about lengthy, particularly when the recipes were at the end anyway. In summary, I enjoyed this and would read another by this author.

This book was a struggle to get through for me. received really wanted to love it, and just couldn't. I couldn't get past how dimwitted Emory was and that made it hard for me to enjoy the book. In fact, I can't tell you anything about the book all I can think of is Emory.

This was a nice start to a new series. Em has a problem from page one. Waking up, very hungover, on her bathroom floor is a shock, indeed. How could one glass of cheap wine have caused a blackout? Especially since Em isn't a drinker - one is her limit. Too bad that that wasn't the end of her pain. When her phone calls aren't returned by her friend, Tori - the one she was out with the previous evening - she pulls herself together and hops on her bike to go check on her friend. Let's just say that Em has terrible luck picking friends.....and husbands. No wonder Em blows her top and has a very public altercation with Tori after Em finds her engaged in hankypanky with Em's husband, Philip. What should have been simply the end of a marriage and a friendship becomes a murder investigation when Tori is bumped off and the police turn their focus on Em.
I enjoyed the character of Em. Unlike so many other cozy food amateur sleuth formulas, Em is flawed and very human. Even a bit too trusting at times. She knows she has to try to figure out who disliked Tori enough to kill her and the list isn't all that short. The mystery was complex enough to keep me engaged to the last page and I had several ideas as to the identity of the killer and each was wrong. I enjoyed it enough that i'm looking forward to the next entry to the series.
My thanks to the publisher Cinnamon and Sugar Press and to NetGalley for giving me an advance copy in exchange for my honest review.

Excellent read...... OMG what a wonderfully written who done it.....I felt so sorry for Emory because you know she’s no murderer but everything points to her..... but who’s framing her? I couldn’t put this down , loved it and the recipes at the end I’m definitely gonna make these alcoholic cupcakes and try them especially since I add alcohol to a lot of my baking

Book 1 in a new series.

Wow. This book was not for me. I got a few chapters in, and hating the main character, the dead woman and everyone else in the book, I gave up.

When Emory discovers that her husband, Philip, is having an affair with her best friend, Tori, Emory naturally gets very angry and gets into a very public fight with Tori. That creates a problem, however, when Emory finds Tori’s very dead body just a few hours later. Naturally, the police consider Emory their best suspect, so Emory sets out to give them other suspects. As she tries to clear her name, is she prepared for the secrets she will uncover?

Between the Orange County, California, setting and the culinary cozy hook, I couldn’t pass this book up. As always, I enjoyed seeing the action taking place in areas I recognized even if I don’t know them super well. This book works in many ways like a TV pilot, readjusting Emory’s life as well as giving us a murder to solve. The murder got overshadowed a bit at times, but I always found the book compelling to read. There are several good surprises and twists to the mystery. The ending was a little weak, but it does answer all of our questions. I certainly sympathized with Emory since she comes across as very trusting, something that creates problems when your life becomes a mystery. I did feel her family was a little too self-absorbed. I’m sure it was supposed to be funny, but I found it more annoying. The 11 recipes at the end include some Western themed dishes as well as a couple of delicious sounding cupcakes. All told, this is a fun series debut that will leave you wondering just where cupcakes and murder will take Emory next.

3.5 stars

Sprinkles of Suspicion is an interesting start to a new series – full of yummy baked goods & more than its share of dysfunctional characters. While it does stay true to the cozy mystery formula, I would say it’s a little edgier than most, especially at the beginning.

Our first introduction to Emory is her hungover morning-after (after what she’s not exactly sure) and catching a couple of people umm… in flagrante. Those two people being her husband and best friend (as stated in the blurb, so i’m not giving away anything new). The ultimate betrayal, one would think. But oh no, it gets much worse and poor Emory is flung into a series of events she didn’t ask for. And my goodness but our girl Emory is kind-of a hot mess haha. She’s super naive and frankly clueless for most of the book… and I wanted to shake her more than once and say a) TURN ON YOUR DANG PHONE (lol) and b) just TELL PEOPLE what Tori did to you. Emory kept a lot to herself, not even telling her lawyer all the connections and events that unfolded, and I couldn’t help but think it would have been a lot easier for her if she had. But, I’ll also add that toward the end of the book we see hints that she is finally wising up a bit, finding her voice, and standing up for herself.

I’m still not sure whether I actually like Emory or not but like i said she was growing up – and growing on me – by the end. There weren’t many characters in the book that I actually did like, to be honest. With a couple of notable exceptions – Randall, who brings a dash of romance potential & a whole lot of swooniness, and Tillie. My favorite character is Tillie – she is a hoot and I hope we see a lot more of her in future books. You’re never quite sure what she’s going to do or say next, and her heart is genuine. I loved the role she played in the story, and I look forward to knowing her better as the series progresses.

Bottom Line: This isn’t a typical cozy mystery – it’s a little edgier, for starters, and you might be surprised at how everything gets all tied up – and who does the tying – in the end. The only thing that’s predictable about the plot is that Emory will be a mostly-endearing hot mess in one way or the other, but the other characters aren’t quite as easy to figure out. Just when I had an opinion about them, something happened in the plot to tweak those assumptions a bit. It definitely kept me on my toes and frequently took me by surprise (and made me crave all manner of baked goods haha) – and I will in all likelihood read book 2 just to see what happens next.

(I voluntarily reviewed a complimentary copy of this book

First I would like to thank Netgalley and IBPA for the opportunity to read and review this book.

I will admit I found the first 3 chapters hard to get through, mostly because I felt frustrated with the way the character acted, lol. I was able to put the book down for a few hours though and when I picked it up again I was quickly sucked into the action and found that I was feeling very anxious for Emory and I couldn't stop reading until the story came to a satisfying conclusion. I will admit I cried some happy tears in the last few chapters.

I eagerly look forward to the next book in this series, I can't wait to see what Emory and Tillie, yes I'm sure she will get involved, get into.

I really enjoyed the main character in the book. She was funny and totally relatable. I also loved Tilly (don't want to give away any spoilers.) Suffice to say she was a real hoot!

The issues I had were mainly around plot. After the main character discovers the body, very quickly she's making fun cupcakes for a little girl. The transition didn't work for me. I have to say that I don't read a lot of mysteries with recipes, so maybe this is common in the genre, but it almost felt like I'd entered a totally different book.

Also I was disappointed with the denouement. Again, not to give away spoilers, but the main character is rescued and not as the result of her own ingenuity either. I prefer more independence in my heroines. Even if someone comes in to help them, it should be as a result of some actions they took and that's not the case here.

Short version: good characters, subpar plot. I hope the author brings back the character but gives her more action.

Sprinkles of Suspicion by Kim Davis
Book #1: Cupcake Catering Mystery Series
Source: NatGalley
Rating: 3/5 stars

**MINI-REVIEW**

The Bottom Line: OK, the brutal truth is this: I liked this book, but some issues need to be dealt with if I am going to continue reading this series. First and foremost is the constant dimwitted nature of Emory; it is an absolute wonder she made it to the end of the book without getting herself killed. Even a handful of characters comment on her oblivious nature and that needs to change if I’m going to take her seriously outside of the kitchen. Next, the writing needs to be tightened up to avoid repetition and the plot needs to be a bit more complex to keep readers truly interested and engaged. With all that being said, I still liked this book. As it stands, it isn’t a big thinker, but a nice little escape that kept me turning pages. I have to say, I was largely turning pages because of the descriptions of Emory’s tasty creations, the elderly woman she goes to work for, and her dog. In the long run, these aren’t going to be enough to keep a series moving forward successfully, but there are changes that can be made to ensure success. I see a great deal of potential here and have high hopes for changes in future installments of the series.

Emory Martinez wakes up in her bathroom with a hangover, not even knowing how she got there, after a night out with her best friend Tori. After finding a hickey on her neck, she's afraid her husband will see it, since he should have been home an hour ago, but his bed is empty. Not able to reach Tori by phone, she bicycles (yes, bicycles) to her apartment, and finds her husband and Tori in a compromising position. After pummeling Tori outside over this, the police arrive and she calls her sister for a ride home.

Her twin sister gives her a ride home and reminds her about a child's birthday party that day that she needs to make a cake for, completely unconcerned about Emory. (More on this later). Then her mother calls about her being humiliated by a photo on Facebook, and Tori looks and sees it's of her and an unknown man. When she can't log into her account to remove the photo, she goes back to Tori (!) for her help - and stumbles over her dead body.

Now the police think she's the main suspect for the murder, but don't have enough to arrest her for it. So Emory tries to find the identity of the man that she was with the night before so that she can figure out why Tori would post that photo, and after finding Randall (do we know his last name?) she realizes that Tori set her up for a fall. It doesn't help that her boss thinks she's trying to blackmail him and fires her, too. So Emory has only one choice: find out who killed Tori so she can get off the hot seat and back to a hot stove...

This is the first in the series, and I thought it would be a nice cozy to pick up. It's not a bad one, it just has a few problems: Emory, the main character, is an accountant, so you'd think she'd have an analytical mind, but she's completely clueless. She allowed her police officer husband to do their own finances, and now she's facing bankruptcy. He's also a serial cheater, and she knew nothing through their seven married years, so this is the person we're looking at to solve a murder.

Now, I tried to give her a pass because her marriage falls apart, she loses her job (which I didn't understand why that happened, since it made no sense to do that to her), and then she's accused of murder. It's a lot to take in, but Emory has trouble figuring it out. I had to wonder how she can concentrate on recipes when she can't even concentrate on conversations with other people.

Then, the day of the murder, her sister Carrie picks her up and is only concerned about herself and Emory making a cake for a kid's birthday party. Her mother takes her cheating husband's side and wants them to get back together, thinking everything Emory does is wrong. (We still don't know how her cake knife was gotten - it was never explained).

Unfortunately, while the writing was fine, the characters, for the most part, fell flat. The only interesting character was Tillie, and we didn't get to spend any time with her. While the book was uninteresting for the first two thirds, toward the end, beginning with her meeting Tillie, is when it picked up, so I'm glad I finished it if for that alone.

The murder was basically solved when the killer admitted everything at the last minute, and Emory never did figure it out herself. For an amateur sleuth, she has no clue -- which isn't surprising. The murderer tells her the truth without provocation on their part. I do like to see the protagonist put the pieces together, but in this case, there wasn't any pieces, and Emory did nothing. So I couldn't give it a high rating just for that alone. However, since it is the first book, I will probably read the next to see if the series improves, and also the characters. There are also quite a few yummy-sounding recipes in the back that I might try myself, so that's a plus.

First in a new series. Good read. I enjoyed the main character, but she seemed to zone out quite often. I would recommend this book. I’m interested to see if I am right about the murder she will solve in the next book.

Thank you to NetGalley for allowing me to read this book in exchange for my honest review.

Sprinkles of Suspicion is the debut book in Kim Davis’ Cupcake Catering Mystery series. The characters are well developed, and the storyline is well thought out. The mystery is complex, with multiple suspects, lots of twists and red herrings to keep readers engaged and guessing. I’m looking forward to reading the next installment in this series.

Things were going well for Emory Gosser Martinez. She’s married to Philip who is a police officer, has an adorable Labradoodle mix named Piper, a steady job as an accountant, and helped her twin sister, Carrie, with her party planner and catering business while building her portfolio to hopefully achieve her goal of opening a bakery specializing in cupcakes and cakes. After a night out with her best friend, Tori Carlton, she discovers her husband is a cheat, she loses her job, her reputation is ruined, and she doubts her dream of opening a bakery will ever come true. The day after Emory has a public altercation with Tori where threats are made, Emory discovers Tori’s body and becomes Detective Harper Jackson’s prime suspect. With strong evidence stacking up against her, believing someone is framing her, and fearing the detective won’t continue to look for the actual murder, Emory decides to look into things on her own. Her investigation reveals lies, secrets, and deceit and places her in harm’s way.

I received an Advance Reader Copy of this book from NetGalley and voluntarily reviewed it.

Sprinkles of Suspicion is the debut of the Cupcake Catering Mystery series set in California and featuring down on her luck Accountant and part time baker, Emory Martinez. After a night out with her best friend, Tori Carlton, Emory wakes up on the bathroom floor with a roaring hangover, no idea how she made it home and only brief memories of why she has a hickey on her neck.

Desperate for answers Em makes her way to Tori's condo only to find her friend in a compromising position with Philip, Emory's husband. Completely blindsided that her husband has been having an affair, Em ends up in a cat fight with Tori and things suddenly go from bad to worse. Later that day, Emory returns yet again to Tori's condo and discovers the woman dead and there's no doubt in anyone's mind that Em is the killer.

Determined to clear her name Em sets out to find what happened to Tori and quickly discovers that her friend wasn't exactly who she thought. A tangled web of money laundering, theft, gambling addictions and murder come to light as the sometimes naive Emory tries to get her life back on track.

A satisfying afternoon read offers up a new heroine and a lovable dog. The story ends with Emory landing a new job with a delightful elderly lady and the promise of madcap adventures is on the horizon. Will Emory find love again?

I received an advanced copy of Sprinkles of Suspicion from NetGalley via Cinnamon & Sugar Press. While not required to write a review I am happy to offer my honest opinion.