So.. it’s a big question mark for this one. I loved the cover and thought I was embarking on a cosy mystery - my choice of book nowadays, but my gosh it’s not cosy at all.

There were times when it had the cosy vibe, but it’s a lot more menacing, and Daisy’s abilities are cool, but she read more like an antagonist than the protagonist. Which I totally get and I’m all for morally grey characters but there didn’t seem to be a lesson learnt at the end of it, no reckoning and the whole ‘change the errors of my ways’ speech. It just was. Which didn’t really sit well with me. If you like morally grey characters who don’t really figure out the errors of their way and fix up, then this book is for you!

This is an interesting debut as this is an interesting mystery with cozy aspects.
Even if i'm not a fan of vigilantes couldn't help loving Daisy and the setting.
The characters are well developed and the solid mystery kept me guessing.
A clever and unusual story, can't wait to read the next novel.
Recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

I have had this sitting on my NetGalley shelf calling my name since September. I try not to read and review things too far in advance so I've been putting it off and finally devoured it over the past two days. It comes out in just under a month so this would be the perfect time to pre-order. It's .... different. It's not exactly a "cozy mystery" in the traditional sense, though there are definitely elements of coziness and there is, indeed, a mystery. It is, however, very likely to make it onto my favorite reads of the year list and it's only April. It's just that delicious.

Full teaser post at https://wellreadpiratequeen.blogspot.com/2022/04/magic-lies-and-deadly-pies.html

I was so tickled by this title on Netgalley and the story is as literal as it sounds! I thought this was going to be a cosy mystery because of the cute title and blurb but the story went alot darker than I expected.

This story follows Daisy Ellery who has the flair of mixing magic into her pies. The magic she possessed is only passed down to the daughters in her family. While she can add any kind of magic into her pies, her calling is to help women avenge their suffering from men by helping them bake deadly pies. Everything seemed to be going well in her deadly pie and main pie business until she finds an anonymous letter that threatens to expose who she really is. What will Daisy do? If she is exposed, she will also be exposing all the women whom she helped. As time is running out, she sets out to find who is behind this.

I love the concept of the magic pies which really pulled me into the story. As the story unfolds, I realised that Daisy is no different from a serial killer. She just uses yummy pies instead of violence but where does that lead her? Although I don’t condone her actions, I understand she is trying to help these women who are helpless and scared. I just felt she didn’t have to kill them since she could have used her magic to make different pies instead of deadly ones. There was a reason why she is doing this but it really doesn’t justify her actions.

I love how Daisy is her own person. She is independent and resourceful, and doesn’t change herself for others but at the same time, she is also very closed off and wary of people getting close to her. It was nice to see how that changed throughout the book. The plot itself is quite predictable but I wasn’t a fan of why the person threatened Daisy. I thought that was pretty weak.

I wanted a slice of pie after reading this cause the description of the pies are just so yummy! Overall, I still enjoyed the story and thought the concept is fresh.

Thank you Netgalley and Crooked Lane Books for the arc

This is not your standard cosy, despite the deceptively cosy cover art. It's an unusual cosy mystery ('cosy'? Thriller?) in that it has shades of Dexter: a serial killer killing people who kill people. In this case, killing abusive men. I actually put it down for a long time shortly after starting it, not convinced that I wanted to dive into this, but after I picked it up again I actually read it quite quickly.

Daisy is a baker using her familial magical skills to bake delicious pies for various establishments around town. She lives in a van parked behind a local diner, and in exchange for parking the van in the lot, bakes a variety of pies for the owner Frank. What Frank doesn't know is that Daisy has a secret life, that of baking deadly pies for women who have been wronged by their boyfriends or husbands. 'Pies Before Guys' is a word of mouth business, her mobile number being given to someone who needs it by someone who used her services previously.

But someone has figured out what she's doing and is blackmailing her to make them some pies. It's not the way Daisy works, and she refuses to be blackmailed. Working through her list of potential clients, she works her way to the blackmailer. During all of this, there is the potential for a romance (or two!).

The author has worked hard to make Daisy a sympathetic character and while it's hard to root for a serial killer, I felt she succeeded for the most part. It's still getting your head around the fact that she kills people, regardless of whether they deserve it, and being 'okay' with that, for the premise of the book at least.

Still, despite my initial reluctance and the darker theme of the book, I ultimately enjoyed this very much and am looking forward to the next book in the series. The characters are good, the writing excellent, and the story - despite it's darkness - was very well done.

So this is one of those books that piqued my interest from the first chapter to the end, with an unusual plot and setting.

Daisy Ellery is a talented pie maker and her pies are special--she adds a certain magical element in the pie to help the women take revenge on the men who had wronged them. Her unusual business is successful and started after she accidentally killed a man with a pie. But then someone knows her secret and asks her to kill three women--if she didn't follow the orders, her secret will be let out. Daisy has a certain rule--she will never harm a woman and she was determined to find out who this person was, who was determined to bring her dow.

Reading about the pies is actually making me hungry--those descriptive crusy words and fillings made my mouth water. From the first chapter to the end, it was really interesting--like a typical cozy mystery novel. I was literally hooked into the book and what made it more interesting is when Daisy joins the pie baking contest while trying to find the person who had sent her the message. The writer did a good job of drawing the reader into the story and I actually enjoyed reading the book! Oh, the ingredients of those pies are given at the back which I want to try at home. I hope this is not a standalone novel and would like to read more from this author. Overall, this book worth five stars!

Many thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC. The review is based on my honest opnion only.

I LOVED this book. Feminist and fun, I had an amazing time even though I started it in the Las Vegas airport at midnight.

Daisy serves sugar-coated revenge to men who harm women with deadly, magic-infused pies. When she receives an extortion note, and realizes someone has discovered her murderous activities, Daisy must uncover the blackmailer or risk losing everything. Popp bakes up one deliciously dark mystery in this entertaining series debut!

Daisy is a twenty-something, living in an RV with her adorable dog, Zoe. Daisy’s known as Pie Girl because she bakes pies for the local diner plus drives her RV to the local university and events selling cutie pies - hand-sized bits of pastry full of deliciousness. Along with something special.

Daisy has the ability to bake things like energy or happiness into her pies. She can also bake revenge into them. She secretly helps abused women by crafting deadly pies for them to feed to their abusers. Until someone starts blackmailing her, threatening to out her deadly pies and the women she’s helped.

For all that this is about deadly secrets and revenge pies, the book has a cozy, even gentle feel. Lots of autumn vibes, especially when Daisy is at the local farmers market or a local apple orchard.

Magic pies
Zoe, the adorable dog sidekick
Found family
Delicious descriptions
Blackmail and family secrets
Pie competition
LGBT+ rep
Light romance

Thank you so much for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for my honest review! I really loved the premise of this book! I do get tired of the baking aspect in almost every cozy mystery but it really worked here! I liked how the ending wrapped up nicely and the characters were really interesting!

Daisy Ellery has a special talent that's been passed down through generations of daughters. Daisy bakes pies that can give prople comfort, courage, honesty or whatever magic she chooses to put in their particular pie. She sells.her pies all over town including at the local college to help the students study and she gives them to battered women to give them courage. Sometimes a battered woman just can't get out of a bad situation, even with the courage in the pie. That's when they ask for Daisy's help. In extreme cases Daisy will make a pie that will make the man stop. In most cases the only way for him to stop is to die. A few can actually change their ways.

Helping people in whatever way they need is her life, until she starts getting threatening notes and texts. Someone wants her to use her magic to kill three women. She won't do it, and can't do it. Now it's up to Daisy to figure out the identity of her blackmailer and get him to stop.

An unusual cozy mystery.

It’s the main character that is a murderer and there is more depth of character. If it weren’t for the cover and the title, I would have dubbed this a thriller, not a cozy.

Daisy Ellery so from a line of women that add magic to their services. Her grandmother was a dressmaker that put love and best wishes in the seams of the dresses she made; her mother put love and courage in the hair she styles. Daisy puts magic in to pies. Studiousness and calm in pies she sells to students, candour if needed. And her pies make men that beat their spouses stop.

But someone’s found out and they want Daisy to make a few pies for them or they will expose her. Daisy would rather not be exposed, but she also doesn’t want to give into the blackmail. She tries to find the women that are the intended recipients of the blackmailer’s pies and through them, her blackmailer.

Meanwhile, Daisy is also making a few friends and there’s a budding romance.

I liked this one.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4640908149

First I would like to thank Net galley for letting me read this advanced copy for exchange of a honest review.
I enjoyed this read, it is definitely not as light as the cover and name suggests, but I still enjoyed reading it. I will be following the series as it comes out and I do recommend you reading it too.
Be advised that It is not a cozy read as I was expecting, but still great.

Misha Popp introduces her Pies Before Guys mystery series through the book Magic, Lies, and Deadly Pies. This book introduces the reader to Daisy Ellery who has inherited magical abilities from a long line of female ancestors. Each woman in her family has expressed their magical abilities through their individual talents. This book was somewhat darker and different from normal cozy mysteries as the main character is in actuality a facilitator of vengeance on men who treat women badly.

The author has created a character who is capable of imbuing the pies that she bakes with magical properties. Some of these pies are harmful and others are helpful depending on the situation each is created for. The underlying mystery of this story is not focused around who is the killer but rather who is blackmailing Daisy and why. The underlying social issues of abuse and manipulation that are brought to the surface of this story are definitely timely and well-developed with an additional thread of enabling the victims of these issues to stand up and fight back.

At times, I found this story to be somewhat disjointed in the telling as there were several different focuses to try to follow dependent on whether the different types of pies that Daisy was creating in each instance. Hopefully future books in this series will draw more on the positive points of these issues and less on the negative, dark side with Daisy moving forward from the challenges she faced here.

I received a copy of this book from NetGalley and Crooked Lane Books in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Really enjoyed this debut book by Misha Popp, who created the sexually fluid vigilante Daisy Ellery who kills bad guys with delicious pies. The book is a mix of Practical Magic meets Dexter, with some sweet romance that makes this a genre bending novel.

Daisy has a very cool mobile bakery called Pies Before Guys that she sets up at Farmers Markets. But she also donates pies to a local domestic violence support group where she meets women who may need her help with murder that comes in the shape of a pie.

“The first time I killed a man with a pie, it was an accident. But only the first. That was a lot of pies ago, and this is most definitely the on-purpose kind. It’s not fancy, but it doesn’t have to be. It’s just a buttery Oreo-crumb crust filled with rich peanut butter mousse, drizzled with salted chocolate ganache and dusted with crushed peanut brittle.”

Popp’s book touches on feminism, sexual fluidity, consent, patriarchy, domestic violence, murder and of course, delicious pies.

Set to release, May 2022

Magic, Lies, and Deadly Pies, by Misha Popp

Firstly, I’d like to thank NetGalley for giving me a free e-ARC of Magic, Lies, and Deadly Pies in exchange of an honest review.

I'm still on the fence about this book. I truly enjoyed the entire plot, although it became tedious at times, and I lost interest.

This story follows a woman who bakes lethal pies to aid women who have been abused. This novel is also billed as a cozy mystery, which I'm not sure what to make of because it follows a murderer. However, she received a letter threatening to expose her business, so she did what any reasonable person would do and sought to figure out who the letter was from, because of the fact that the message was anonymous.

I chose this since I was in need of a relaxing read. I'd been reading a lot of depressing books lately and needed something to lift my spirits. It's not a lighter read, despite the fact that it's labeled as a cozy read. I enjoyed that some of the descriptions are also highly descriptive, because I despise mysteries that aren't descriptive.

Although the plot improves towards the end, I do not believe it is worthy of a three-star rating. Don't get me wrong: the writing style was fantastic—as was the plot—but it just didn't stick out to me.

In the past few years, we’ve seen the rise of cooking shows and competitions. The Great British Bake-off in particular has won over people’s hearts on both sides of the Atlantic. Watching people make (usually) good food is simply great fun. But what if the food was downright murderous? That’s at the heart of Misha Popp’s debut Magic, Lies and Deadly Pies (5/10/22), which features Daisy Ellery who can whip up delicious pies…and pies that kill abusive, horrible men. It’s a love letter to food, especially pies, and a big dollop of female vengeance. Murder & Mayhem had a chance to talk with Misha Popp about her delicious debut.

Related: 11 Culinary Cozy Mysteries Bursting with Recipes for You to Try Out While Under Quarantine

Note: This interview is edited for length and clarity.

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Murder & Mayhem: Where did you get the idea for the book?

Misha Popp: It was the TV show Pushing Daisies, which was a cult hit a few years ago, and it is about a pie maker who can wake the dead. He has a misquote in the show where he says, “I’m Ned, I have a pie maker. I wake pies and make the dead.” I was like, “Okay, what if this really cute kind of innocent guy really did make the dead instead of waking the dead?” It sort of sprung off of the idea of “Who would be the pie-ssassin?”

And who better than somebody who looks completely innocent and charming with her little dresses and her cute little dog at the farmers market? Then she has this whole secret dark side.

How would the book be classified?

It is a crazy feminist revenge fantasy dressed up in a really cute dress with good pies. When I finished it, and got it ready for submission, the draft that we had at the time could have sat equally in fantasy in women's fiction or in crime. But none of them were really stronger than the other. Given the murdery element of it in—the fact that she is a serial killer— it did end up going crime rather than women's fiction or romance. But it is definitely a genre mashup. It's not the easiest thing to describe. This is just my weird murder pie book.


Magic, Lies, and Deadly Pies
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What is it about food that makes it magical?

I'm a big believer that food can change the world. Like, when the world ends, I will be there with cookies and snacks because it's not going to make things worse and it might make things better just for that little moment. It's not obviously magic in the witchy sense. But it has that effect. When you’re having a terrible day, that perfect bite of ice cream or that bit of pie might make it a little bit better even for that tiny moment. That is a power that pretty much everyone can harness and use unless they're a complete kitchen disaster, which is a whole different story.

I'm a big foodie, I worked as a baker for a long time. So food is just part of who I am. Over the top food descriptions are up my alley. I love Amy Reichert’s books—The Coincidence of Coconut Cake and stuff like that. Going back to the inspiration thing, I liked those kind of elements of foodie books, but also my heart is will always be in crime and murder. So it's combining all sorts of disparate elements into something that is weird and hopefully works.

Related: Taste Mystery with Lee Hollis's Best Cozy Novels

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You were a baker? Could you tell me about that?

So I started baking, it probably would have been the early 2000s. This was back when Ace of Cakes and other cake shows were a big thing on the Food Network. So I definitely went through a massive cake phase. I'm not artistic unless I'm sculpting things out of chocolate, but I cannot draw my way out of a paper bag.

I was actually teaching high school at the time. So my students would be the recipients of all these wacky things I was making—like some days we'd have dinosaurs, other days we'd have Lilo and Stitch.

That kind of morphed into a home business for a while. Then once I got out of teaching, I was working in a bakery in western Massachusetts that was fabulous. It was two other people and me. It was really small, but we did high volume so it was always busy. The kitchen scenes from the book definitely pull from the flavor of that work experience of being in that kitchen and having that kind of camaraderie.

Unfortunately the bakery burnt down, which was terrible. It was this whole strip of businesses. Now making cakes is back to being kind of a monetized hobby, something I do on the side, and I get to be picky about who I'm baking for, which is nice. There are definitely days where I miss working in that bakery kind of atmosphere and I think, “Maybe I should go back to it.” But it can take over your life for sure. Kitchen hours are not friendly.

Related: Where to Begin with Bestselling Cozy Mystery Author Joanne Fluke

You make pies too?

If I'm making something for myself at home, pie is what I default to. If I'm making a cake, it's usually some kind of big sculpted fondant monstrosity. Maybe once a year, I will have a craving for cake. But I always see cake as being like more of a job thing. I get paid for cake. I get to make and just eat pie. It's awesome. So pie and macaroons tend to be my most common home baked things for myself.

Revenge is at the core of the book, especially against terrible men. Could you talk about that?

There are a lot of terrible men in the world who are really content being publicly terrible. That's what ticked off as being a revenge thing, especially in those Trump years. It's definitely still an issue. But there were so many awful people with big platforms just being like, “Hey, I'm awful.” I wanted somebody to take them down.


What do you want people to take away from this book?

At the end of the day, this is a fun escape. Times are bad. Sometimes you just need a little whimsy in your murder. On the more serious side of it, there’s the importance of found family and staying true to your principles, even when it's hard, and people don't understand.

Thanks to Misha Popp and her new book Magic, Lies and Deadly Pies that will also have a sequel tentatively coming out in May 2023!

Daisy Ellery bakes magic into her pies. For her regular business, she bakes happiness, stress-relief, love, and good vibes into her pies. For her secret side project, she bakes pies for abused women to give to their partners. Someone begins blackmailing Daisy, threatening to reveal her secret if she doesn’t bake murder pies for a list of women she doesn’t know. As she prepares for a statewide pie baking contest, she tries to investigate who her blackmailer is.

I loved the “magic system.” Everyday magic. Not enough to make this a full fantasy but a realistic kind of magic tied to “feminine” arts and crafts. The pies baked for the abusive men aren’t deadly unless the men make the choice not to change. It’s not all revenge; redemption is available for those willing (it’s just that most aren’t). The cover is pretty misleading and doesn’t match the tone of the book inside. I wouldn’t classify this as a traditional “cozy” except for the descriptions of the pies. There was more of a Buffy the Vampire Slayer feminist vibe to the characters, and the topics dealt with were pretty heavy. The author said she was inspired by Pushing Daisies and I can definitely see this being part of that world.

I am reviewing this for Mystery Scene Magazine summer issue, please see my full review there when it publishes in May

Thank you to Crooked Lane Books and NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Magic, Lies, and Deadly Pies by Misha Popp is an exciting thriller with a dash of magic. Based on the cover, I thought this was a cozy mystery, but I was dead wrong. The story revolves around Daisy, who is known as the Pie Girl. Her pies don't just bring joy though. They have the magical power to kill men who abused women. Women contact Daisy when they've been hurt, and her business is based on making these deadly pies. But what happens when the wrong person finds out about Daisy's business?

Here is an intriguing excerpt from Chapter 1, which introduces us to Daisy's business:

"The first time I killed a man with a pie, it was an accident.
But only the first.
That was a lot of pies ago, and this is most definitely the on-purpose kind.
It's not fancy, but it doesn't have to be. It's just a buttery Oreo-crumb crust filled with rich peanut butter mousse, drizzled with salted chocolate ganache and dusted with crushed peanut brittle.
Okay, maybe it's a little fancy.
I can't help it."

Overall, Magic, Lies, and Deadly Pies is a gripping thriller full of danger, blackmail, and suspense. Although it's marked as a mystery, I would say that it has more in common with domestic thrillers. Additionally, although there was a fantasy element (the pies), I would say that it plays a very minor role, and fans of traditional thrillers will not be put off by it. One highlight of this book is how exciting it was. Based on the cover, I was expecting something slow, but I was pleasantly surprised by how fast-paced it was. Daisy was also a great morally-grey character. I could not stop turning the pages to find out what would happen next. If you're intrigued by the excerpt, or if you're a fan of thrillers, I highly recommend that you check out this book, which is available now!