This story had an interesting premise and engaging characters. I like Emily and her crew and how well they work together.

This was more of a 3.5 star rating than the 4 star I am giving it. This book was good, but was my least favorite of the series so far. I wish there was more interaction between Emily and Brent. I was hoping that Brent would be a bigger part of the book than he was. Too many characters too chaotic and the events were happening too slowly for me. The victim was an annoying person who had crossed many people’s paths. Initially, I had fun trying to figure out who the murderer was. But I found the unfolding of events a tad too draggy.

Excellent addition to this wonderful cozy mystery series. It's one of my favorites series. Emily and Brent are getting ready for their wedding, but murder never stops.. And no matter how much she sometimes wished otherwise, Emily always gets pulled into solving it.
Highly recommend!

Many thanks to Kensington Publishing and NetGalley for an advance copy of this book. My thoughts and opinions are my own and without bias or favor or expectation.

Emily and Brent are due to be married within weeks. Her mother and father are in town for the occasion, the dress is chosen, and guests are invited. Before they can get to that, it’s time for the Arts Festival. Each day, groups of touring acts visit local businesses, perform, and move along to the next venue. Each evening, there’s a full performance and everyone votes for the best act. It’s a fun time except there’s a bagpiper who keeps showing up during performances to play a screeching tune to ruin the performing act. He also plays late at night. He is not popular.

When he’s found dead, people are sorry his death happened but not sorry that they won’t hear the bagpipes again. Emily is distressed to find the body and find a piece of a broken coffee cup with the Deputy Donut logo on it next to the body.

Although Brent is a police detective, people tend to talk to Emily and she’s able to gather information through their conversations. Each clue, rather than clearing up the murder, brings more confusion as Emily, her parents, another business owner, and a contestant are under suspicion. Will she be able to get the killer to say ‘I did’ before she has to say ‘I do’?

This is book eight in the popular series. Emily and her cat, the Deputy at Deputy Donut, are a hard working pair. The side characters of Tom, her former father-in-law, his wife, Cindy, and the employees add to the small-town atmosphere. Emily doesn’t take risks but sometimes finds herself on the receiving end of one.

Be warned, have donuts and a good rich coffee close at hand when you settle down to read this book. Emily dishes both at the shop and will have you drooling with her descriptions of the daily flavors. Store bought or homemade, either will work. To help you along, recipes for double fudge donuts and the frosting they use, and for lemon curd long johns are included at the back of the book.

A great addition to an incredible series! Wonderful characters in an incredible setting. This book will keep you guessing until the end.

This book was really cute. Its about a small town festival that takes place around a murder. The bagpiper was trying to make a statement by playing the same three songs every night but not only annoying he ends up dead. The donut shop owner who is due to be married very soon turns sleuth but when part of the possible murder weapon ends up in her driveway and on top of her shop she has to find out who did it. It isn't who the town suspects. Happy endings at the end.

This is book 8 in the Deputy Donuts series. Emily and her staff are preparing for the Fallingbrook Arts Festival and her wedding. When an obnoxious bagpipe player is found dead holding a Deputy Donuts Mug the police suspect Emily and her family for the murder. A good series for the cozy reader and all the favorite characters are back. Good recipes included. Enjoy.

Double Grudge Donuts is the 8th installment in the Deputy Donut cozy mystery series. As always, I enjoyed returning to Fallingbrook, Wisconsin, to visit with Emily, her fiancé, Brent, friends Misty, Samantha, Hooligan, Scott and of course her adorable cat, Dep. I highly recommend Double Grudge Donuts and the whole Deputy Donut series.

Thank you #NetGalley and Kensington Books for the opportunity to read and review an enjoyable book.

Princess Fuzzypants here; Wedding bells are nigh for Emily and Brent but they have plenty to keep themselves busy in the days leading up to the big day. Emily’s cafe is booming with the tourists in town for the festival. When a piper who kept interrupting other performers is murdered Brent has one more thing to handle before the wedding. The last thing he needs is for Emily to get involved in the investigation, even though he knows she cannot help herself. Worrying about her wellbeing is never going away.’ Even kitty Dep knows that.

Investigating is one thing but when she goes in for life threatening adrenaline pounding high jinx, she comes perilously close to stepping over the Darwin line. Oh, don’t get me wrong. It is a very exciting sequence in the book that leads ultimately to the revelation of the killer but it does make the reader wonder about common sense. I do know that writers must struggle to create things that build tension and excitement.
I could not do it. But you still need to believe that the character would react in a certain way. This one did not quite make it.

Still I will give the book four purrs and one paw up.

I've really come to like Emily Westhill, the protagonist for the Deputy Donut series. Her police office husband was killed, and over the series. she's rebuilt her life, maintained her relationships with her former in-laws, and worked hard to make her business a success. I hate it when amateur detectives go haring off following clues or tailing people and they're supposed to work for a living, especially when they own the business. Emily does do some stupid things that once in a while irritate me, but she's generally level-headed protagonist for us to experience the mystery through. And I like Fallingbrook as as small town--large enough for all these characters and businesses, but small enough to take advantage of the things a small town offers to a mystery writer. In this entry in the series, it's just 2 weeks until Emily and Brett's wedding. A sudden murder means Brett is distracted from wedding planning, so he's not aa central a character as he has been in previous stories, but that allows secondary characters a chance to step up and provide an expanded viewpoint. While I did enjoy the mystery, I have to say the basic raison d'être for the mystery, the Fallingbrook Arts Festival, was just not realistic. Sure, a normal arts fair has been the setting for other mysteries and allows an element of competition and strangers to be part of the story, but the construction of this one is odd: the contestants go door to door to all of the businesses every day and sing or dance or act a scene out for the public. Every day? In front of each and every business on the street? Does every storefront in Fallingbrrok have an outside patio where people can sit and watch? This just seemed really bizarre to me, although I admit I am from NJ and now live in the Wild West, so maybe this kind of festival is common in the Midwest. If it is purely an author's invention as a way to have different suspects present themselves to Emily so she doesn't have to leave the doughnut shop, it fell very flat for this reader. And I love bagpipe music, so everyone complaining how awful bagpipe music is made me a little sad. This is book 10 in the series, so it does get harder for authors to conjecture ways to get the main character involved in a murder, especially in a small town, so it's inevitable that one will be unbelievable. Still, it's a fun read, with likable characters in a setting I enjoy visiting, so recommended.

Normally I enjoy this series. Emily checks all of the cozy mystery heroine check boxes. With this particular book, she barrels straight past careless to stupid. That combined with the flow of the book being off left me a bit disappointed. Hopefully things are back to normal by the next installment.

It’s been a long time coming but Emily Westhill is getting remarried! The loss of her beloved late husband Alec served to bond her with his parents, Tom and Cindy, so much so that she and Tom opened up a donut shop together to help manage their grief. The older Westhills feel like a bonus set of parents for her as she gets ready to marry Fallingbrook Police Detective Brent Fyne, with the ceremony taking place in a matter of mere weeks!

But first Emily is looking forward to her Wisconsin town’s very first Arts Festival. Each day has a different theme, with performers doing the rounds of local businesses before getting together to compete at the end of the day. Bagpiper Kirk McLean makes a big splash on opening day, winning the very first competition for instrumental music and making several enemies in the process of his obnoxious journey to victory. He makes even fewer friends over the next several days, as his bagpipe playing rings out all over town, at inconsiderate times and venues, including outside of Emily’s store, Deputy Donut.

Even so, Emily is shocked while walking to work one morning to find Kirk slain right outside his van in her parking lot. She immediately calls the police, but not before noticing that a fragment of one of her shop’s bespoke mugs is lying next to him. The local police know she had nothing to do with his death, but the new DCI agent called in to assist with investigating the homicide has no such biases. Emily soon finds herself the uncomfortable subject of police scrutiny, even as she’s trying to plan a wedding and run a business. She doesn’t really mean to involve herself with solving the murder mystery but when she finds herself trapped with a potential killer, she’ll have to do everything in her power to make it out alive. She has, after all, a wedding to be in!

This eighth installment of the Deputy Donut mystery series is a must-read for series fans, as it contains the satisfying next step in Emily and Brent’s slow burn romance. It’s always nice, too, to see how supportive he is of her, a belief that’s usually well warranted. I did think it was a little out of character for her to make some of the choices she did towards the end of this novel, though. Emily isn’t ordinarily paranoid or careless, so it was a little weird to see our usually level-headed heroine be both in quick succession. The mystery itself was well written, however. I only guessed whodunnit quite close to the final reveal itself.

There were four recipes included here, mostly of donuts or related delicacies. Much as I love a good donut, I’ve found that my at-home attempts at making them have almost always made me sad. So I decided to try out this recipe from the book, for a versatile donut accompaniment, and use it in a yummy alternate dessert instead:

QUOTE
Lemon Curd

½ cup white sugar
1 tablespoon cornstarch
½ cup whole milk
¼ cup fresh lemon juice (about 2 lemons, depending on size and juiciness)
3 teaspoons fine lemon zest

Zest and then juice lemons. Extra zest can be frozen for later.

In a heavy-bottomed pot, preferably enameled to prevent the lemon from reacting with metal, whisk the sugar and cornstarch together until well blended.

Whisk in the milk, lemon juice, and lemon zest.

Heat the mixture on medium heat, whisking briskly and constantly until the sauce thickens. Don't stop whisking while the mixture is being heated.

Remove the pan from the heat and pour the curd into a heatproof bowl.

Cover the bowl tightly chill.
END QUOTE

I definitely had a span of time there where I was wondering how long I needed to stir this concoction before it would actually thicken! The answer is about ten minutes, at which point the curd comes together quite nicely. I couldn’t find a jam jar to store it in once it was ready to come out of the saucepan, but the jar I did use was quite handy, if rather large. I’d definitely recommend it over your standard bowl though.

Whenever I think of lemon curd, I think of English scones, so decided to serve these with an American twist. To that end, I baked up some Southern-style biscuits, split them in half and spread the cooled lemon curd on each. I then topped one half with a fanciful swirl of whipped cream, dolloped a little more lemon curd on top, and voila, a States-side twist on a high tea favorite. These lemon shortcakes were delicious, and I only wish I’d reserved some of the zest to sprinkle on top for a pretty visual effect.

Next week, we head out to the west coast to bake up some versatile cookies while investigating the suspicious death of a pro athlete. Do join me!

The characters in this novel are very engaging, even the quirky townsfolk. It was an enjoyable cozy mystery with a culinary twist, and the descriptions of the donuts had me salivating.
Many thanks to Kensington and to Netgalley for providing me with a galley in exchange for my honest opinion.

Double Grudge Donuts by Ginger Bolton is the eighth book in the cozy Deputy Donut Mystery series. As with most cozy mystery series each book of this series can be enjoyed as a standalone or in any order with the mystery being completely solved within each book. Of course there is some character building that carries over from book to book for those that follow the series from the beginning.

In the first book of this series we met Emily Westhill who co-owns the Deputy Donut donut shop named after her tabby cat in small-town Fallingbrook, Wisconsin. Emily used to work as a 911 dispatcher until the day her husband who was a police officer was killed so now she and her retired police chief father-in-law sell donuts at their shop instead. Although Emily thought opening a donut shop would be safe she keeps finding herself mixed up in solving murders.

This time around it’s almost time for Emily to walk down the aisle but just weeks before the big day is the Fallingbrook Arts Festival. Every day new talent will be performing all around the small town and Emily hopes to enjoy it all while working at her donut shop, that is until a rude bagpiper interrupts other performers. As annoying as the interruptions could be they certainly didn’t call for murder so when the bagpiper if found Emily vows to catch another murderer.

The Deputy Donut Mystery series is another cozy series that I have followed from the beginning and always enjoy returning back to with each new book. I love that law enforcement is so prevalent in the stories and not made out to be bungling idiots like some cozies tend to do. Emily is surrounded by police and has more knowledge of investigations so it’s fun to return to her sleuthing and there’s always a nice mystery to follow along with all the fun laughs I also enjoy in this genre.

I received an advance copy from the publisher via NetGalley.

This is the eighth book the Deputy Donut series. The book starts with Fallingbrook's Art Festival going on. Emily's parents are in town to judge part of the competition. And for Emily's wedding that is taking place the week after the festival. The day after the festival starts, Emily finds the bagpiper,who won the contest the night before, dead. Even with her wedding a week away, Emily still decides to investigate.
I absolutely love this series. Emily and her friends are rhe absolutely best. I love that her Samantha and Misty are so close. And I love weddings in cozies. They are always so fun. This was a great read and I can't wait to read more.

Dollycas's Thoughts

Fallingbrook, Wisconsin is hosting an Arts Festival. It is a week-long talent competition for all ages with different events each day. The contestants perform each day in front of the downtown businesses as a preview leading up to their performances for competition each evening. That has brought in a lot more business for the Deputy Donut Café keeping Emily, Tom, and their assistants busy. The other businesses are enjoying the extra foot traffic as well.

Then after an entertaining evening, the next day Emily and her tabby cat, Dep find one of the contestants, a bagpiper who had won 1st place, dead on their way to work. The man was murdered not far from her café with a piece of a Deputy Donut mug nearby.

It is also just 14 days until Emily and Brent's wedding. Most of the details have been taken but the last thing they needed was another murder investigation leading up to their big day. Brent is going to miss much of the festival but he has called in for help from the Wisconsin Division of Criminal Investigation. The agent that comes is not the one Emily was hoping for but the point is to solve the case as fast as possible so they can get to their nuptials. Feeling like someone is watching every step she takes, she knows she has to be careful not to become the killer's next victim.

_____

Ms. Bolton has created a marvelous group of core characters for this series. Emily Westhill is an astute amateur sleuth. She gets people to open up to her easily, especially when she comes bearing donuts. She ruminates on the clues until something makes them all into place. She and Brent have such a strong relationship built on trust and love. He knows she has great instincts and she knows to report back to him about everything she learns and theories she has. She also knows to call him when her sleuthing may be dangerous. Emily has a wonderful relationship with her former in-laws. She and Tom work together happily every day and Cindy is around a lot. Emily's parents are in town too and are judges for the arts festival. She also has a great group of friends that always have her back. The character that always steals the scene though is Dep, Emily's tabby cat and mascot of the cafe complete with places for her to play and lounge and a window to watch all the people coming in for donuts and coffee.

The mystery started out with several suspects but as Emily worked through the clues the number of suspects decreased. She couldn't make all the clues fall into place though.  I will admit I tossed a big clue to the side and forgot about it and Emily did too. She really did her best to be safe at all times by trying not to go anywhere alone and going to public places with a lot of people. But when the final clue started to fall into place she may have been in the wrong place at the wrong time. I definitely wasn't on board with the decision she made just a short time later but let me tell you what followed had me holding my breath and then the author threw in a jaw-dropping twist that greatly sped up my heart rate. It was an impressive showdown!

Thank you, Ms. Bolton, for allowing readers to attend Emily and Brent's wedding ceremony virtually. Your descriptions were perfect.

This series is so good. I have enjoyed every book and Double Grudge Donuts is a terrific continuation. I was entertained by marvelous characters and an excellent mystery, all set in my home state. Ms. Bolton creates a great balance of mystery, humor, and romance.

I am very excited to read the next book in the series, Blame the Beignets, set to be released on November 26, 2024, as Brent and Emily begin their married life together and to see what kind of mayhem they get mixed up in next.

Pro:
* Dep
* Delicious sounding donuts & coffee give me serious cravings.
* The town festival premise
Con:
* Begins too quickly with too many new characters and rushes around a bit chaotically
* Belabored trail of suspects and following of the clues, then the final three chapters are a blur
* I just kept waiting for it to settle in and flow together and it never did.

Thank you to Ginger Bolton, Kensington Books, and NetGalley for an advanced review copy in exchange for an honest review.

Wedding planning & donut making, are the main things in Emily's life. Until a bagpiper is murdered and the police find a Deputy Donut mug at the scene of the crime. Emily has to take on the case if she wants to get married as planned & hope she can catch a murderer before she's a victim or in jail!

The Deputy Donut mysteries are so much fun! I have enjoyed seeing Emily's life change in so many good ways. The characters are well-written and relatable. And, who could turn down a delicious donut!

I received an ARC from NetGalley and the opinions expressed in this review are my own.

Emily Westhill is the owner of Deputy Donuts Cafe’ and the Fallingbrook Arts festival is coming to town just weeks before Emily is getting married. But the fun crumbles fast when a bagpiper is found dead in a clear case of murder. Emily launches an investigation to save her herself they find a weapon at the scene leaving disturbing clues about the killer’s identity. The search not only brings too many suspects but also leads to a strange discovery on Deputy Donut’s rooftop. Someone is watching Emily’s every move so she needs to solve the crime before her wedding turns into a funeral.

Brought to you by OBS reviewer Jeanie

I found this to be a thoroughly delightful cozy mystery! This visit to Fallingbrook, Wisconsin, is my favorite so far for many reasons. An easy one is – double fudge donuts! For those who love to bake, the recipe is included. There is a sweet serving of humor, with one scene in particular that was laugh-out-loud funny!

I enjoy the regular characters as they are like old friends. Emily and her late husband’s father, Tom, own Deputy Donut Café, the most popular place in town for donuts and other pastries, special coffee blends, and spending time with friends. The café is named after the cat that Emily and her late husband adopted, so named because of Alec’s law enforcement career and the interesting markings on her side.

The patio at Deputy Donut provided a front-row seat for afternoon visits from contestants of the Fallingbrook Arts Festival. Each evening, there would be themed competitions such as Wee Wonders Wednesday and Troubadour Tuesday. Every afternoon, the acts went to scheduled shops to give a preview of their act. This was the first year of the festival, and Emily’s parents, both avid supporters, hope it becomes an annual event. They would be judging some evenings, so they stayed at Emily’s rather than return to their RV park late at night.

The very best part of this novel is the wedding Emily and her fiancé, Brent, have been planning. They were counting the days to the big event. Brent is a detective with the local police department, and when a new, major crime occurs, he hoped to have it solved before the big day.

Kirk, a bagpiper who took first place in the Musical Monday event, was a thorn in everyone’s side that evening and the following day. He interrupted people when performing, including Quentin, a friend of Summer, one of Emily’s friends. He distracted Quentin so much that he couldn’t finish his coronet selection and took second place. On Tuesday, he interrupted and even followed some of the vocalists who were performing at several shops around town. He raised a stir in the pub, Fireplug, setting off Ed, one of the waitstaff. Early the next morning, Emily found Kirk dead in the alley that led to Deputy Donut. Near his body was a piece of ceramic broken from a Deputy Donut mug. A couple days later, the rest of the mug was found in Emily’s driveway.

The case is a challenge for Brent, as his department had called for a detective from the state Division of Criminal Investigation to assist. Vic was snarky, especially to Emily, and was visibly suspicious of her and several other people. Emily had helped solve several murders over the years. When she was asked to help a café owner, she didn’t want to get involved with the wedding so close, but she began to follow up on some people she considered possible suspects.

The characters are defined well, and it has been wonderful to see them grow through events of their lives. Emily and Brent perhaps had the most changes and challenges, since Emily’s husband had been Brent’s detective partner and best friend. Whether introduced in this mystery or a long-term character, each is demonstrated through realistic conversations and actions. It’s hard to choose just one favorite; I would have to say Emily, and include Dep. She is a loving little cat with a big, realistic cat-sonality. She loves being at the donut shop, people watching through the window between the office and dining area, and racing through the overhead runs and tunnels Tom built in the office to keep her entertained.

This mystery was plotted and executed well. The characters invited me in from the beginning and kept my attention throughout. I had a few suspects, but the bad guy was someone I hadn’t even considered! I didn’t want the novel to end, even though I did want to see who the killer was. I was very satisfied with this cozy mystery and highly recommend it and the series!