This was an good start to a new series. I liked the MC. She seemed down to earth. I hope in future books, there will be more characters introduced and more of the landscape fleshed out. I thought it was an interesting concept of a cider house and am curious how that will develop. The mystery was a bit of a surprise. It was overall an enjoyable read.

(NetGalley ARC Review )

This book was okay. It wasn’t my cup of tea. What mainly drew me in was the cover. It was so cute !
But halfway through the book I got bored and I didn’t feel a connection to the storytelling. The main character used so many descriptive words which made the book feel fluffy. I did however like the main characters background story.

Thanks to NetGalley for an advance copy of this cozy mystery. I enjoyed reading about setting up a cidery.

Kate Mulligan has been deeded an orchard by her uncle. The orchard manager, Carl Randolph, had cleared the barn in preparation for her setting up her brewing equipment and visitor centre. She liked him and found him to be a good employee. But on the third day after she arrived, she finds him dead in his cabin, beaten to death with her cane. Luckily she has a tight alibi, but who wanted Carl dead? It seems everyone liked the man.

Kate has good friends in Orchardville, as she had visited there in the summers in her childhood, and had instant friends. Her neighbour, Daniel, is also an orchard owner, and he helps her a lot with building and setting up the visitors' centre. Within a month she's got cider ready to sell. But someone has offered to buy her land and that of neighbours as well. Kate and Daniel try to find out why the offers to buy are so enormous.

I enjoyed this book and would read more in this series.

#DeadlytotheCore #NetGalley is the first in a new series, and I was delighted to meet Kate and the other characters in this book.
Kate inherits a small orchard when her Uncle Stan passes away, and her immediate idea is to open a cider house.
Kate lost her husband in a tragic accident several years ago, so this change in her life came at a good time, and she is determined to make the best of it.
Not everything is as it seems for Kate, someone is trying to buy her property and others around her, but Kate refuses to sell and soon finds herself wrapped up in a murder investigation.
I'm looking forward to seeing this series grow, the author did a great job with this book.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for selecting me to read an advanced copy of this book.
I'm happy to recommend it to other readers.

This was Book #1 in this new cozy mystery series 'A Cider House Mystery' While I enjoyed this book and the main character, Katie, who inherits the family orchard, the descriptors in the book were off the charts. Too much detail makes for some complicated understanding for the reader. However it is a fun new cozy mystery series set in a small town - what is not to love. I hope the next book will be more straight forward and leave the finer-point descriptions to the reader. I am looking forward to seeing what Katie gets involved with next.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC.

"Deadly to the Core" is the first book of new series "A Cider House Mystery" by Joyce Tremel. I appreciate the level of actually alcoholic drinking going on this one. It's just right. Some alcoholic themed cozy mysteries go into alcoholism ranges but this one was in appreciations range. Thank you, keep that up for this series.

I enjoyed the mystery as well. It kept me guessing and I was a bit surprised by who did it. I do wish there'd been a bit more to the reveal at the end, but it was still good.

I have a love-hate relationship with the descriptors in this book. Part of the descriptions are vivid and lovely and does a fantastic job of bringing the world to life...on the other hand it gets to be a bit much when our main character describes things like paint to no end. Some of the dialogue also felt a bit... disjointed. However, I loved the idea of mystery with an orchard and cider and some suspicious small town people. Descriptors and some dialogue aside, I thought it was enjoyable. 3.5-3.75 stars for me.

Well crafted intrigue
Katie has inherited the family orchard and has big plans. Recently widowed, she intends to use her cider making knowledge to create a cider house on the property.
Ms. Tremel paints the small town and characters vividly. There are villains, victims and wonderful people. We go along with Katie as she tries to ascertain the motives as do the local LEOs.
Research and happenstance enable her to put the pieces together, but will it be fast enough?
I requested and received a NetGalley ARC gratis and found the tale delightful. I highly recommend it.

I really wanted to enjoy this book. I thought the title was clever and I liked the cover. Reading the book’s description, I thought it’d be a light, fun, quick read. The writing, though—ugh! It was frustrating and not enjoyable.

The main character would describe her surroundings to no end. For instance, she walked into a room, she’d detail every little thing, even the color of the paint on the walls. In contrast, when she would meet a person, there’d be one or 2 lines of description that weren’t very descriptive at all. Other than hair or eye color, wasn’t there more the MC observed about the people she met?Height? Weight? Scars? Their clothes? Some type mannerism to give the character some sort of depth?
Every character in the story was just flat, including the MC.

The MC lost her husband of 12yrs in a tragic accident. She misses him so much that she has conversations with him in her mind. That’s understandable. I would expect the character to have some type of emotion but this goes into how the writer “told” instead of “showing” emotions. Here is a prime example (and it’s the point when i skipped to the end of the book to find out who the killer was so I could be done):

A character is killed. He had a cat so the main character goes into the character’s house the day after the murder to retrieve the cat’s things. The MC tries not to look at where the dead body had been found. 😕 That’s it. That’s the extent of the emotion. Never mind that it’s the day after the guy was killed…MURDERED. Never mind that she just entered a crime scene. Never mind that the MC was the one who found the body. Never mind the character had been killed with the MC’s cane or that less than a few hours before, police had her in the station questioning her as a possible suspect. Nope, no emotions, no thoughts about any of those things. All you get is, I TRY NOT TO LOOK. Unbelievably, the writer spends more time describing where the MC looks for/finds the cat’s things.

I didn’t care anything for these characters. The writer didn’t give me anything to make me want to care. And it’s such a shame because I really think this story could have been pretty good if she’d gone back through the book and eliminated some of (actually, more like A LOT) the needless descriptions and also added emotion! Don’t just say someone is sad, SHOW how sad they are with the with their facial expressions, body movements, or the changes in how someone speaks. In real life, when we meet and speak to people, we tend to pick up on so many nonverbal things and then we process those actions in our minds. The writer dropped the ball by not having the MC do any of that.

The story really dragged. The pacing was thrown off by how the writer described every single thing the MC did. If the MC was thirsty, you had to read about how she went to the cabinet. She got a cup. She went to the sink. She turned on the water. She filled the cup with water. She turned off the water. She took a drink. Okay, okay. Maybe it wasn’t THAT bad but Ugh! It wasn’t fun to read every little thing. Readers are quite capable of filling in the blanks on some things. Writers don’t have to share every detail! In this book, it was too much!

So *sigh* I finally had enough. Around the 6th or 7th chapter, I skipped straight to the end only to see who the killer was. The ending/reveal was lackluster. No longer hearing the late-husband’s voice in her head was a yawn, just as I’m sure the progression through the story to get to that point was, as well.

So disappointing. This book really could’ve used more development and I’m sure it would’ve been a decent read.