The Golden Spoon by Jessa Maxwell #eleventhbookof2023 #arc

CW: death, murder, adultery, violence, sabotage

So this thriller is a locked room mystery that takes place during a Great British Bake Off-esque competition, and I am all about it. America’s Grandmother Betsy Martin is being forced to share the spotlight with a new cohost, and boy is she unhappy about it. When the six contestants start experiencing sabotage of their bakes, and weird things start happening around the manor house, who can be trusted?

I liked this book a lot, maybe because I’ve watched a lot of baking shows. This was also not my first book that took place on a food competition show, but it is probably the best one I’ve read. A lot of the action took place during the competition and that’s what I want. I want explanations of the competition itself. Too many others just use the setting and it’s almost negligible to the rest of the plot. So I was pleased that this book included a lot of descriptions of the food they baked and their decision processes.

One interesting things: Betsy’s chapters were told in third person and the rest of the characters were told in first person. It wasn’t a terrible choice but it was noticeable. Overall, this is a solid mystery, and I really enjoyed it. I would recommend.

Thank you to @netgalley and @atriabooks for the advance copy. (Pub date 3/7/23)

#thegoldenspoon #bakingbooks #bakeweek #grafton #bakingcompetition #foodmysteries #betsymartin #americasgrandmother

The Golden Spoon has been described as a mix of Knives Out, Only Murders in the Building and the Maid, but make it The Great British Bake Off, which immediately grabbed my attention. I enjoyed this cozy mystery and  thought it was a great debut! I think I would have enjoyed it even more if I didn't read it during my reading slump. I did find the book started out a little on the slow side, but I really got into the story around the 35% mark and needed to know what happened. While the ending was a little predictable, I still enjoyed following the story and characters.

Written in multiple POV (I think up to 7 characters), I was worried it was going to be difficult to follow and keep track of who was who. However, this wasn't the case for me. I thought the author did such a great job of writing and developing each of the characters in a unique way that made me feel like I got to know their personalities and backstory. I also really enjoyed the setting of the Grafton manor too!

Overall, I enjoyed this one and rated it between 3.5 to 4 stars. If you are looking for a cozy, locked-room mystery that gives off The Maid vibes but is about a baking show like The Great British Bake Off, check out The Golden Spoon (out March 7).  Apparently this book is currently in development as a limited series with Hulu and I'm excited to see this adaptation!

Thank you to NetGalley, Simon & Schuster and Atria Books for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

I immediately wanted to read this book when it was described as "Great British Bake Off" meets "Clue" or the first "Knives Out" movie. Could there be a better combination? We are introduced to the gorgeous and history Grafton Manor, where a baking competition takes place each year. This baking competition is beloved by all and the host of the show is considered America's Grandmother. But not is all as it seems when this years contestants make their journey to the manor. The cover lets you know that things seem to be a bit off during this weeks competition... and then a dead body is found.

This book did a great job of combining great detailed imagery of the bakes the characters did as well as build a story that lead to the ultimate mystery and resolution to the murder. Each of the contestants also have a great back story and are overall enjoyable and relatable. This was a fun read that was not very heavy and had a great balance of mystery, story building, and fun.

I would give it 4.5/5! Maybe some day Goodreads will let us do half star ratings.

Thanks to Netgalley for the early copy to read.

I really enjoyed the setting of this book and the idea. Who wouldn't love a murder mystery on the set of British Baking show? I wish there was more character development. I was not a fan of the ending, it also felt rushed at the end.

If you’re a fan of cozy mysteries and enjoy the Great British Baking Show, you will absolutely LOVE this book being published 7 March 2023!!
I give it all the stars 🌟 and a chef’s kiss!
I devoured this fun take on reality baking competitions! This one is set in the US on the estate of a famous baking guru. This year the producers want to bring on cohost, one who is much younger and very charming vs Betsy who is older and more motherly.
The contestants range from young and old, and all seem to have hidden agendas for wanting to compete.
Once the week long bake off begins, it seems there might be too many cooks in the kitchen! As the contestants try to bake their way to The Golden Spoon award, obstacles are thrown at them such potential sabotage and crew interference. This ensures great tv until someone turns up dead and a decades old mystery is uncovered!!
I consumed this fun mystery in one day and can’t wait to read more from this author.
A huge thank you to NetGalley, Simon and Schuster, Jess’s Maxwell, and Atria books for providing me with this eArc in exchange for my honest opinion. I loved The Golden Spoon by Jess’s Maxwell and you will too!!!

Many thanks to NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

I feel like I was the perfect audience for this book, and while it was decently entertaining - I'm sorry to say it was mostly a miss for me... I love GBBO. I love a mystery novel. The marriage of the two seemed like a dream. But the story was disjointed, the relationships and characters unfulfilling, and the reveals stilted and somewhat awkward.
I am familiar and fine with novels in which each chapter is a different person's perspective. However, I don't understand why all but one were written in first person.
Most importantly, the mystery piece of this story veers off in several vague directions which are haphazardly forced into a tidy ending. And I was a little surprised by how gory the descriptions became at the climax, given how "vanilla" it had been up until that point.

This was not the cozy mystery I hoped for with a baking competition gone awry. Dare I say it was "under-proofed." But if you're looking for an easy read, this one will do.

This was a super fun and absorbing debut!

This is a full cast read, filled with a bunch of very different, very colorful characters, with the perfect balance of sweet and savory.

The whole production of the baking show was fun. You get to go along through the process each contestant takes during their baking. I enjoyed that neither the baking or the cooking show overwhelmed the story. Because in the center of this book, we have a great mystery that runs deep.

With so many different people in such a closed environment all having to interact with one another, with competition, bad blood, and lots of secrets, The Golden Spoon is the perfect recipe for a great reading experience.

What a delicious ride! Baking competition + semi-locked room cozy mystery + a slew of interesting (if a bit cliched) characters = a quick and fun read! This story is told from many perspectives, and some of the entitled characters’ thoughts and comments were laugh-out-loud funny. I couldn’t help but think of Mary Berry and the rest of the crew from The Great British Baking Show. There were plenty of twists and turns to keep things moving along and interesting. I found myself not wanting to put this book down. I would have loved a bit more of the competition itself; otherwise I thoroughly enjoyed this debut and look forward to reading more from Jesse Maxwell.

Thank you to NetGalley for an advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

What an incredibly fun mystery!! In the spirit of Bake Off (which we’re obsessed with), this book follows the happenings of a U.S.-based baking show called Bake Week. The characters all have amazing personalities, which shine when things begin to go wrong during filming. Horribly wrong.

The premise of this book was ridiculously great. A feel-good baking show set at an old manor in Vermont? Aspirational producers? A grandmotherly host? Yes to all of it! The characters really shone, and were written like so many people we all know. A young up and comer, a tech bro, a grandmother, a neurotic middle-aged man, a mid-career woman trying to find herself…there’s seriously a bit of everyone represented in the cast of characters.

I loved how the mysteries (plural!) were set up and then revealed, and while I wasn’t wholly surprised by any twists, they were excellent.

Overall, I’m obsessed with this book and it will likely be one of the most fun I read this year!

I had high hopes for this one based on the marketing and premise - but it never went where I thought it was going. It took a long time to really feel like it got somewhere and then the ending was a bit too rushed for me. If you like "cozy mysteries" you may enjoy it and perhaps even love it more than I did. Thanks to NetGalley and Atria Books for an advanced e-copy in exchange for my honest opinion. The Golden Spoon will be released on 3/7/2023.

This was a fun read. As a fan of The Great British Baking show, this book felt like a comfortable behind the scenes look at the contestants. The mystery added an additional layer of entertainment.

I really struggled to decide how to rate this. I actually haven't yet, as I write this, decided how many stars I'll give it and I'm hoping by the time I've gotten my thoughts written down, I'll have settled on a star rating. Let's start with the pros:

Overall, I really really enjoyed reading this book. If you're a fan of cooking shows, specifically the Great British Bake-Off, this book lets you pretend that you're in the tent with the contestants, while imagining a darker side to the show. Grafton is the perfect setting for both baking and mystery. The classic idyllic look of a large tent on the grounds of a stunning manor house should be familiar to Bake-Off fans, and the mysterious interior of a manor house is familiar to mystery lovers everywhere. The first 80% of the book reads as a cozy mystery. It's very focused on baking, the (potentially suspicious) motivations of the bakers for wanting to be part of the show, and a scandal brewing in the background of filming from a pretty clear source.

With around 20% of the book left, the book goes from cozy mystery to off-the-rails thriller with a murder and conclusion happening rapid fire and a bit abruptly. Which leads me to my cons:

Before I get into the whiplash of the ending, I want to briefly mention some timeline and continuity issues, as well as some of the character development. Because there are so many POVs, and each character is doing a different activity for large portions of the book, some of the chapters seemed to be chronologically out of order. There was one major continuity issue for me that was eventually explained, but was confusing for quite a bit of the last portion of the book.

In terms of character development, I find this to be a major area of missed opportunity for the book. Following day one of Bake Week, all the characters sit around together after dinner and you're able to learn a bit about each of them. For the rest of the book, most explanations of character motivation come as internal monologues of each character themself. I wish the author had taken more time with the characters interacting with one another to show their bonding and demonstrate their motivations instead of relying on the characters basically coming right out and saying them. It led to some seemingly incongruous acts from a variety of characters who were not as developed as they could've been.

Finally, I wish some of the pacing had been a bit faster. I loved the bake-off vibes, but when murder was teased in the prologue, it felt like it was taking way too long to get to it. In a way this almost feels like 2 separate books - the cozy mystery of a baking show that's future is looking rocky and the murder mystery thriller of the last 20%. The murder ultimately ended up feeling like an excuse to hook the reader. It comes relatively out of nowhere and the ending (minus the epilogues), ends up rather muddled.

So, back to my star-rating dilemma. I did thoroughly enjoy reading this book, and definitely recommend it to mystery fans, with the caveat that it is more cozy mystery than thriller as marketed. It had the potential to be a really perfect cozy mystery novel, and ended up trying to do more than it needed to. Ultimately, I don't think it quite warrants 4 stars, but it was better than a 3 star read based on my personal enjoyment, so I'm settling kind of in the middle at 3.75.

The great British bake off meets murder mystery and if you like either of those things…you’re in for a treat!

This was delightful, sweet, funny, minor suspense and overall great story telling.

I didn't really enjoy this book. I thought it was more YA with its plot and language. It never really pulled me in and the characters felt one dimensional. I did enjoy the setting though!

I must first thank NetGalley as well as the publisher for my eArc in exchange for my honest review. An absolute delight! If you are at all a fan of cozy mysteries, well just mix that with The Great British Baking Show and you have this enticing read.

I really enjoyed this story! I have never read a thriller that takes place on the set of a baking show so it was fun to put a twist on the traditional thriller. With that being said, I wish the mystery element took place throughout the story more. The first half of this book really dragged for me. I enjoyed reading about the baking show, but I wanted more mystery elements earlier in the book. The second half of the book really picked up and there were a few twists I definitely did not see coming. Overall, this was a very fun and enjoyable read!

I had a case of the Sunday Scaries!

I had a fabulous weekend with all my favorite girlfriends. We hired @hibachi2u_ to come to the house for a nice sit down dinner and wow! Did we have a blast!

In order to relax and rewind before the start of the work week I picked up a book to relax

the Golden Spoon

I absolutely loved this cover and it was fitting to the storyline and a creative spin on all that transpired .

The narration flowed with such ease that what I had assumed would be a few chapters before bed turned into reading cover to cover. This book was wild! I was thoroughly impressed early on and stayed engaged the entire time .

I loved that this was not only a thriller but also incorporated baking which is one of my favorite hobbies (beside reading)

This book hold a shocking twist… don’t say I didn’t warn you 😉

I finished this weekend off with an explosive 5 star thriller . I couldn’t be happier

Teaser:

Every summer for the past ten years, six awe-struck bakers have descended on the grounds of Grafton, the leafy and imposing Vermont estate that is not only the filming site for “Bake Week” but also the childhood home of the show’s famous host, celebrated baker Betsy Martin.

The author of numerous bestselling cookbooks and hailed as “America’s Grandmother,” Betsy Martin isn’t as warm off-screen as on, though no one needs to know that but her. She has always demanded perfection, and gotten it with a smile, but this year something is off. As the baking competition commences, things begin to go awry. At first, it’s merely sabotage—sugar replaced with salt, a burner turned to high—but when a body is discovered, everyone is a suspect.

I liked this debut novel from Jessa Maxwell. I loved the premise: essentially murder takes place on the set of a popular baking competition show. A body is found on the set of the show during a big storm. It’s also evident that someone appears to be trying to sabotage the bakers on set during the competition. There’s also a bit of mystery surrounding the past of some of the bakers which adds another little layer of intrigue to the main plot.
A tagline of Clue meets The Great British Bake Off has been used to describe the book.
I love GBBO and I love murder mysteries so this was right up my alley. It may be a bit of a niche read, as it does focus heavily on the bakers and discusses their bakes and it is a slow burn. I almost want to describe it as a cozy mystery, but that description doesn’t feel quite right either.
My biggest complaints were that I felt like it took a little too long to get back to the body that’s uncovered at the opening of the book (after that chapter it goes back to the start of the competition and tells the story leading up to the night the body is found). The ending felt a little far fetched and fell flat for me and there is a piece that didn’t really add up to me. So it went from a 3.75/4 star read to a 3.5 rounded down to a 3 star read mainly due to the ending.
I think fans of classic murder mysteries and those that love GBBO would enjoy reading this book.
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Thank you NetGalley and Atria Books for a copy of this eARC.

Content warnings: sexual assault, murder, sexual predator

What if the Great British Bakeoff took place in an old manor house in Vermont... and someone was murdered? Welcome to Jessa Maxwell's THE GOLDEN SPOON. This is a mostly cozy mystery (though there are themes of sexual assault and one of the characters is definitely a sexual predator using their status to leverage sex) with some tense moments.

Chapters rotate being told through the eyes of the show's host, Betsy Martin, and each of the contestants. There was a little too much backstory of each contestant being given at the beginning for my tastes - it took focus off of what was actually happening during filming and made it take longer to get sucked into the story. But overall this was a really enjoyable mystery. I loved the unlikely friendship between Lottie and Pradyumna along with the mental health journey of Stella. I thought both the murder and the other mystery had satisfying endings.

Advanced Reader’s Copy provided by NetGalley and Atria Books in exchange for an honest review.

I’ll admit that the beginning of this book was a slow start for me….the first 1/3 of the story has little intrigue. It focuses on a televised cooking competition hosted by a Martha Stewart-like well known baker & her new (disliked) cohost. There is a lot of uninteresting details about the contestants, and a few potential sabotaged cakes. However, a pivotal plot twist that links a contestant’s past with the current competition really adds to the story. It picks up quickly and I really liked how it all wraps up.