I thought that this book was great from beginning to end. I found the writing easy to follow, characters likeable, and the story to be engaging. Looking forward to reading more from Misha Popp.

A GOOD DAY TO PIE is baked to perfection, with just the right blend of sweet and savory flavors, and an impeccable presentation. Misha Popp combines two of my favorite ingredients - GBBO and murder - to make a flawless showstopper!

(And also? Dessert is a totally acceptable breakfast choice.)

I thought this was a really cute, refreshing story, and for someone who loves cooking or baking shows, it’s definitely going to be a hit! I liked the lead, Daisy, and the supporting cast of characters, as well. The twists worked without being totally devastating and the story flowed well! It was a lovely book to read and I hope it’ll be just as enjoyable to other people!

I really really enjoyed A Good Day to Pie! It takes one of my guilty pleasures - baking competition reality shows and sprinkles on a little bit of mystery. I love the big twist in this book that I really didn't see coming but this was so so much fun! If you're looking for a fun escape this is definitely it!

Daisy is a pie expert with a secret side business: some of her creations are infused with magic that can kill men who've hurt women. When she decides to join a televised baking competition, she is horrified to discover that one of the judges is meant to be the target of one of her future deliveries. Even more shocking is when two people turn up dead as soon as the game begins and before her deadly pie has even been made.

This is the perfect book for fans of The Great British Bake Off and revenge stories. The characters are very lovable and the story takes a lot of crazy turns to keep us on our toes. I'm eager to read the first book now!

Thanks to NetGalley for providing me a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

The concept was strong and exciting: a baking competition with a cozy mystery flavour. If I enjoyed reading the scenes about the competitive tasks and all the "behind the scenes" when filming such a show, I felt much less involved in the murderous investigation. Slightly disappointing especially as this series contains a rather unexpectedly dark Dexter-style twist compared to other books in the genre. I hear the first one is better, I might have a go at it.

This book is absolutely for Great British Bake Show fans. They are guaranteed to love it. I'm a fan, and I did.

It is the second book in the series. I did NOT read the first book. So I cannot compare the two. I have read that some who loved the first are disappointed. I cannot speak to that. I can say that I had no trouble understanding any of the backstory, and it was included smoothly within the story without a nasty data dump.

Now then. Daisy has a pie shop "Pies Before Guys" in her RV that makes not only good old fashioned pies, but also the occasional murder pie. She doesn't use poison, but rather magic aimed just at that oh so special nasty piece of work. The ones she kills always have it coming. That's kind of the point. But in this story, Daisy is headed out of state to a television bake-off competition show with a few murder pie deliveries on the way. Imagine her surprise when one of the judges is on her pie list!

I found this great fun. The characters were all over the map, in a good way. You had the tension of the contest and the tension of, well, people dropping dead. It's disconcerting. Of course the producers are all about the money, so are in total denial - keep those cameras rolling. Daisy has suspicions behind her suspicions. And not only does she get to be Nancy Drew, she even has secret passageways! This is not a spoiler, contestants find them early on, it's pretty hilarious. Let's just say there's a whole lot of running around sleuthing amidst all the delicious baking. And lots and lots of delicious baking. If you DON'T like Great British Baking Show, you will be mightily ticked off, and skipping about a third of the book, so it may not be for you. I, however, had a blast.

This is a fun little cozy mystery! It literally MADE me need to rewatch as many seasons of bake off as I could (too many) and also really made me want to try making pie (a flop). I really enjoyed this - I don't think it's perfect and it definitely leans more baking show then murder mystery which was okay for me but I could understand not feeling too happy with that. I also wish the pie murdering and the *magic* part was a bit more dominant as those were such fun elements!

A Good Day to Pie: A Pies Before Guys Mystery
By Misha Popp
Crooked Lane Books
February 2023

Review by Cynthia Chow

After winning a statewide pie contest, mobile bakery owner Daisy Ellery has been invited to FoodTV’s newest baking competition show, Bake My Day. Leaving behind her pooch Zoe and the Frank’s Roadside Diner kitchen she borrows, Daisy heads off to Turnbridge, Massachusetts to stay in the Lonborough Estate where she and 11 other bakers will be competing for a huge cash prize and a ton of publicity. Along the way, Daisy drops off a few pies for her Pies Before Guys clients, those women who need to have an abusive male permanently removed from their lives. Able to whisk magical doses into her pies, Daisy has been serving out (undetectable) poisonous justice to those who have escaped the legal system and deserve to suffer the most severe of punishments. What Daisy didn’t expect was that one of those on her naughty list would be Bryan Miller, the lecherous and obnoxious judge who will be tasting all of her confections on the competition show.

As Daisy gets to know her fellow contestants, she begins to bond with them even as they face off in cookie, cake, and meringue challenges. That makes it all the more upsetting when one of the contestants suffers from a fatal fall in the kitchen, and then later Bryan Miller meets his fate without Daisy’s intervention. The motto “The show must go on” is in full force as the contest continues, with Daisy and the other bakers attempting to focus on their showpieces while ignoring the multiple elephants in the room. It looks as though it will be up to Daisy and her magical inclusions of honesty and confessions to force out the truth, even if it results in a little too much honesty when her magic gets a bit unfocused. Illicit affairs, hidden passages, and epic bake fails have Daisy feeling the pressure to deliver justice along with tasty and mouth-watering delicious bakes.

Due to the immense amount of patisserie descriptions, customizable recipes, and detailed baking craft explanations, readers’ mileage may vary on how much they appreciate this baking competition mystery. As someone who watched every Mary Berry episode Great British Bake Off (and before it was named in America The Great British Baking Show due to legal reasons) and every single episode of Top Chef, I LOVED this mystery. The author excellently depicts every intrusive judge moment, every vilification of competitors, and every tragic baking disaster moment that are so prevalent in these reality baking competition shows. Even better are the complicated relationships between contestants, who compete against one another but also unite together as they are forced into stressful and often absurd situations. Readers will be cheering for Daisy to win Bake My Day as much as they will for her to solve the mystery, especially since they have become attached to the sympathetic contestants and their reasons for entering the competition. This is a unique twist on the cozy mystery genre, as it highlights the craft of baking while also having a heroine dealing out a very lethal, if magical, form of justice. Every page was a delight in this foodie mystery that celebrates the bonds of new friendships while never shying away from how the legal system can ignore those who need it the most.

Daisy owns a pie business and on the side does secret pies before guys business. Her magical pies help rid the world of yucky men. She enters a reality cooking TV show. She needs to deliver a pie to a guy after the show. But lo and behold the man in question is one of her judges and another contestant ends up dead. Daisy must do some investigating while trying to win the competition.

This was such a fun book to read. A book that will make you crave all the desserts. I enjoyed the magical elements and finding out who the killer was. I can't wait for more mysteries with Daisy.

A murder-mystery baking competition? Sign me up. Although this was such a good story and very well written, I felt like the authors political views seeped into the characters & situations and I personally don't enjoy reading that.

As someone who enjoys cozy mysteries and all things cozy, I obliviously watch the Great British Bake Off. I loved that A Good Day To Pie takes place at the baking competition. What sets this book above other books with a baking or cooking competition is that it is the first time I've read a cozy that uses a reality TV competition vrs a one day baking competition. Misha Popp's baking competition is like Great British Bake Off meets the Lifetime TV show Unreal if Agatha Christie was the executive producer.

Setting the second book in a cozy series in a different location and introducing almost all new characters AND using swear words is a bold move. This series continues to break some of the classic cozy tropes, but I think it stays true to the genre at its heart. Having the baking competition taking place at a mansion where all the contestants and crew have to stay for the full two weeks of the show's taping is quite a clever closed room mystery.

The baking scenes are also mouthwatering. I could really go for a pie, cake or cupcake just thinking about these scenes.

All in all this was a book I really enjoyed and I give it 5 stars.

Thanks to #NetGalley for the ARC! All opinions are mine! #AGOODDAYTOPIE

Daisy is back and this time she enters a contest to win $100k in prize money. She also has to deliver a murder pie, but it turns out the intended "victim" is a judge. Unfortunately he turns up dead before the pie is ever delivered.

I really liked the first book in the series, but this one didn't live up to that one. This one was more focused on the cooking show and describing in detail the bakes and filming.

This was my first book by the author and the story was a Read Now title that I lived the cover and the description sounded really interesting, so here I am .
An interesting story overall, with an intriguing character that makes her way through a pie competition and solving a murder while she is the one that seems to have making the killing concoction.
It was a quick and fast read for a perfect cold afternoon.

Very grateful to the publisher for my review copy through NetGalley

I love a good cozy mystery and Misha Popp's new series is to die for...or I mean to pie for? Or...well its a good thing I am not in charge of the cozy mystery puns.

After her first book "Magic, Lies, and Deadly Pies", Popp gives us another funny and endearing murder mystery to solve. Daisy is baking her way through yet another pie competition. And this one has even higher stakes. Between filming and competing, Daisy is expected to create another one of her sweet but murderous concoctions...but what's a gal to do when the person she is supposed to kill ends up dead?

It seems like someone might be after her secrets again! Daisy decides she will just have to solve the murder before anyone gets the chance to expose her.

A Good Day to Pie expands Daisy’s murdery baking story within a full-blown, televised competition. In the first book of the series, the focus was on her deadly, magic-laced bakes and the slow build of relationships / romances with other fun, quirky characters. A whole new – large – cast is introduced in this take-off on the Great American (or British) Baking Show. Instead of pursuing her own pie agenda, Daisy also leaps into the role of amateur sleuth when mysterious deaths arise.

If you love such shows, as I do, the book provides an in-depth, day-by-day glimpse into that controlled world, spiced with a heap of baking expertise detail. An interesting concept, for sure, yet I did miss the original cast and murder pie intention. Because I was watching one of the TV series while reading, I also determined that there’s a special energy and connection on those shows that’s challenging to translate to a written page. Overall, though, it’s a nicely written story and an especially enjoyable read for baking show enthusiasts.

I love enjoyed the book! I had not read the first one but still was able to understand and enjoy the plot of this one! I loved the dichotomy between fun/funny and a little twisted! Great read for people who don’t read a lot of thrillers or crime. Well done.

Love this series, love the characters and LOVE pie!

I recommend this author to fans of magic and cozy mysteries.

I hope there are more to come :)

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review! It was incredibly well done and I loved the plot.

Super quick, fun read. It was definitely hard to catch up since I hadn’t read the first in the series - I still don’t understand the murder pies as well as I could, and I missed out on some family/friend backstory from book one - but the story still worked and the baking show premise was a blast. With that came a LOT of characters, and I felt like I was mixing a few of them up as I read. There were also a couple of moments where I wasn’t sure if I missed a conversation or if the lead in was too subtle - for example, Courchesne (one if the bakers) says something to Daisy (out intrepid main character) about being bi — but there’s no reason for it in the story, no lead in that would make Courchesne think Daisy is bi, and it just threw me off, like we were checking a diversity box in a clunky way. That said, this was still a great mystery, there’s a lot of solid, non-awkward representation, and once I read book I’ll plan to continue the series.