Thank you NetGalley and RBmedia for the ARC of this audiobook for my honest review

A liked the first and last , the last one was especially cute but the middle one was eh. Overall though they were very simple mystery’s with nothing too crazy and I feel like I was just a bit bored

Great stories from great authors, a trifecta of soda bread schemes. All three stories are short enough that they can be enjoyed over a three to four day period and are perfect for listening to while commuting to work. Especially since no one is going to notice when you laugh out loud at the antics of the elves in the third story.
My only hesitation at giving this a 5/5 rating is the narrator's voice, which was neither Irish nor an unaccented English which is what almost all of the characters needed to be. I had a little trouble getting into the flow of the story at times because I was distracted by how a character was made to sound versus how they have been sounding in my head from previous reading experiences.

Enjoyable and whimsical, if a bit predictable and repetitive. Would definitely recommend if you enjoy cozy murder mysteries!

The three short stories in this audiobook are quirky and fun. This collection fits perfectly in the cozy mystery genre with its loveable characters, amateur sleuths, and murders that keep you intrigued to the very end. Although, I liked Mrs. Claus and the Sinister Soda Bread Man the best, each story is deserving of praise and makes for a fun read. Not to mention I now want to try Irish Soda Bread! Thank you Netgally for the opportunity to listen to this audiobook for my honest review. 3.75⭐️

This was a fun book of novellas that kept me listening from the jump. I hope that this combo of authors will release another book of novellas in the future.

#IrishSodaBreadMurder
#NetGalley

Thank you NetGalley for the ALC of this novel.

To make for easier reviewing, I’m going to do a short review of each story within this audiobook. I did enjoy the narration of the story as a whole and thought listening to these stories was a very fun experience!

Overall I’d give the audiobook a 3.5 star rating, rounded up for Goodreads.

Irish Soda Bread Murder by Carlene O’Connor
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
This was my favorite of all the stories. It was the most engaging and had a unique premise. I honestly was entertained the entire story and didn’t put things together until the end. I enjoyed the characters in this one the most and there was the most diversity in this cast of characters. That’s always a plus for me!

An Irish Recipe for Murder by Peggy Ehrhart
⭐️⭐️⭐️
This wasn’t my favorite, but I still enjoyed aspects of it. I thought that the setting of this story was particularly cozy. I enjoyed the female friendships in this story as well. The plot moved a little slow for my liking though, which is why this one is rated at 3 stars.

Mrs. Claus and the Sinister Soda Bread Man by Liz Ireland
⭐️⭐️⭐️💫
In my research after reading, I found that this is a story that belongs to a larger collection of Mrs. Claus stories and novels. I may have gotten more out of this if I read the other work beforehand. Being dropped in here took a little bit of catch up on my part to piece together what was going on. Past that, it was cute and I enjoyed the characters!

Three cozy mysteries from three series by three authors all about Irish soda bread! Perfect for St. Patrick's Day. With the three stories all being so different, it's difficult to rate this collection. Kensington's penchant for grouping novellas by different authors like this is interesting, because while I'm an avid reader of Liz Ireland's Mrs. Claus mysteries, I don't typically read the others. Yet, if I had skipped this book in favor of the other books in the series, I would have felt like I was missing out! And this Mrs. Claus mystery was a heck of a one--the elves and Mrs. Claus head back to her home of Cloudberry Bay, and if you're wondering how much trouble three elves can get into in Oregon, the answer is a lot. The ending felt a bit rushed, but I loved seeing everyone in a new setting and thought it was such a fun story otherwise. The other two novellas were both enjoyable, particularly the second one by Peggy, but I'll always have a soft spot for Mrs. Claus.

I listened to this book on audio, my favorite way to enjoy cozy mysteries. I would say the narrator was generally good at doing all the voices, but her narration voice has a bit of an accent, which was disorienting because none of our protagonist/in-book narrators have accents. I kind of wish they would use a different narrator for each of the three novellas--the narrators of the respective series.

Thanks to Tantor Audio for my ALC and Kensington for my ARC! All thoughts and opinions are my own.

5 stars - 8/10

So boring. The storytelling was dryer than a bad batch of soda bread. Nothing about the first mystery was at all interesting and I was too bored to continue. These cozy mysteries just weren't getting anything done for me at all.

Three short stories that are cozy and readable. Great for an afternoon by the fire

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Three very talented authors, Peggy Erhart, Liz Ireland and Carlene O’Conner, collaborated together to write three cozy murder mystery novellas in the book, Irish Soda Bread Murder. I listened to the audiobook that was narrated extremely well by Carlotta Brentan. She clearly distinguished between the voices of each character in the three cozy mysteries. As the title indicates, all three cozy mysteries revolved around an incident that involved Irish Soda Bread and St. Patrick’s Day.

The first Cozy mystery was written by Carlene O’Conner and was called Irish Soda Bread Murder. It took place in Galway, Ireland. Someone died after eating some Irish Soda Bread. Who was responsible? It was not who I suspected. Wait until you read how the mystery was solved!

The second cozy mystery, entitled An Irish Recipe for Murder by Peggy Ehrhart, was my least favorite of the three cozy mysteries. There were just too many characters to keep track of.

The last cozy mystery, Mrs. Claus and the Sinister Soda Bread by Liz Ireland was my overall favorite of the three. It took place in Oregon and believe it or not a few of the characters were elves pretending not to be elves. It worked!

Overall this was an entertaining series. Each cozy mystery could be read on its own as stand alone books. Thank you to Carlene O’Conner, Peggy Ehrhart and Liz Ireland for working together to bring these fun and delightful cozy mysteries to your readers. The timing was perfect. I highly recommend this book.

Thank you to Tantor Audio for allowing me to listen to the audiobook of Irish Soda Bread by Carlene O’Conner, Peggy Ehrhart and Liz Ireland through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

Thank you to NetGalley and to the publisher for allowing me to preview the audiobook of this book in exchange for my honest review.
I really wanted to like this book as it has pretty much everything I love in cozy murder mysteries, but unfortunately it dragged badly and I couldn’t wait to be done with it. Partially, the narrator is very deadpan and quite boring, but also the characters are extremely flat. I thought there would be some kind of connection between the stories, but there wasn’t which made it hard to invest in the characters/plots. Additionally, especially in the middle story, there was so much unnecessary detail and explanation, you lose the mystery and the stakes entirely. The first story was definitely the best out of all three and I would absolutely read a whole book or series with Tara as an investigator, but it went downhill from there. The last story, while I thought it would be a cute and entertaining read in the holiday season, was kitschy and low stakes. Lastly, I know the unifying theme of the book is Irish soda bread, but the amount of times that the entire phrase was repeated also grated on my nerves.

Irish Soda Bread by Carlene O'Connor: This was a fun, short mystery and I was so happy to meet up with Tara Meehan again. The Home to Ireland series only has two full length books so I love getting to read these short stories.

An Irish Recipe for Murder by Peggy Ehrhart: This was a fun, short mystery in the Knit and Knibble series. I love this series but the short stories are even better because Peggy doesn't get wrapped up in the minutiae of the story, like bone china and Bettina's outfits.

Mrs. Claus and the Sinister Soda Bread by Liz Ireland: I loved seeing the elves in Cloudberry Bay! Liz packed a lot of action into this short mystery and Ernie really is a horrible caretaker.

Carlotta Brentan did a great job narrating this collection of short stories. I look forward to listening to more of their work in the future.

Giving this a 2-3*. This is a set of 3 short stories. The first book is pretty cute and readable; I’d say. 3-4*. But the second two books are probably just 2*; they are ones I probably wouldn’t finish if I wasn’t reviewing them for NetGalley. I did love the narrator, though, she’s excellent.

Another St. Patrick’s Day themed anthology by three established cozy mystery authors is one that can’t be passed up.

Carelene O’Connor’s Irish Soda Bread murder story finds her MC, Tara who is helping the family with psychic convention, solving the murder of one of the attending psychics who died by eating a bite of one of the Irish soda breads shared.

Instead of the sleuth having to do all the questioning, Tara instead was able to watch and eavesdrop on all of the investigations done by the police with the suspects through a hidden camera. This was quite a unique way of being able to solve the crime.


An Irish Recipe for Murder by Peggy Ehrhart has besties Pamela and Betina trying to uncover the killer of the soda bread baker competition’s judge in the town’s local St. Patrick’s Day celebration.

I found this story had a lot of dialogue and needed a bit more of a storyline and resulted in me not feeling very connected with the lack of character development.

Mrs. Claus and the Sinister Soda Bread Man by Liz Ireland has Mrs. Claus and her three elf companions travel to Cloudberry Bay, Oregon to check on her flooded inn. When she finds out her caretaker Ernie has been up to more than just managing her inn and into some illegal activity. She has no choice but to find out who killed Ernie's friend to clear her name.

This was by far my favourite story of the three because I really enjoy the characters so much. The author creates the perfect balance of the plot and character based stories with this series and you can’t help but want to be in the characters’ world. With funny incidents and seeing how the elves adapted in the human world was entertaining to read.

The narration was done well and she did a great job with the voice differentiations.

I always want to respect all the time, energy, effort, and money that is spent on put into publishing a book and an audiobook. That being said, this was just a middle of the road, nothing super special, and just mediocre for me.

I felt like this had a decent plot and decent characters, but it didn't keep my attention the way I feel most cozy mysteries can. However, it also seems that I am in the minority in this way of thinking with this book.

Never second guess yourself, if it looks interesting to you, give it a shot, but if you are looking for something that is going to keep you on your toes, in my opinion, this won't be the one.

I do want to say thank you to #Netgalley and #TantorAudio for the advanced audio copy of this book. I enjoy giving books like this one a chance. All my opinions are my own.

Three short stories for all the cozy mystery lovers out there who have an affinity for Irish traditions. I found the first one very unbelievable and a frustrating reveal. The 2nd one was my favorite, and I felt the best developed mystery. The last was a very whimsical premise, but the mystery was strong.

***Thank you to Tantor Audio for providing me with the Audiobook for free via NetGalley in exchange for an unbiased review.

These short stories will get you in the mood for St. Patty's day for sure! Each mystery revolves around Irish soda bread and they were quick to listen to with great narrators. Carleen O'Connor was the only author I was familiar with so it was nice to be introduced to two new ones, Peggy Ehrhart and Liz Ireland. If you're in the mood for some cozy St. Patty's day mysteries, check this one out!

Thank you NetGalley for the opportunity to Listen to this audiobook and review. All opinions are my own.

Publication date: 24 December 2024

This is a collection of three cozy mysteries that center around Irish soda bread baking contests. Each story was unique with my favorite being the third one, Mrs.
Claus and the Sinister Soda Bread Man, which features Mrs. Claus and three elves trying to figure out who is causing chaos at the bed and breakfast she owns in Oregon. The other two, Irish Soda Bread Murder and An Irish Recipe for Murder, were also very good with twists I was not expecting. All of these short stories are perfect for winter time, especially with St. Patrick's Day approaching in a few months. I listened to the audiobook which I recommend you do too! The narrator told each story very well and made each character come to life!

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this audiobook in exchange for my honest review!

A themed short story or novella collection of cozy mysteries to tempt you to binge the series or to give you a morsel to keep you excited for the next book in the series to come out. In this collection, three different authors have taken a loaf of Irish Soda Bread and woven it into a story using their own characters from one of their series that they write to create a mystery to delight and entertain! It is so much fun to see how each author uses the item in their story in a completely different manner than the other authors. While each create a fun and entertaining mystery to feed our mystery loving brains and bring us another installment of their individual series! If you haven't read any of the authors, this is a way to get a taste of the characters. However, I will say that reading the series in order will allow you to get to know the characters and personal relationships between the various people in each story much better as each book builds upon the last book to further develop stronger characters and friendships. This is an outstanding collection of authors with unique and sometimes quirky characters that will make you smile with enjoyment as you read or in my case, listen to the book. The narrator does an outstanding job of bringing each story to life and giving the characters that extra bit of life that only an audiobook can bring.

Cozy readers will delight in another cozy mystery story compilation book lead with Carlene O’Conner. I enjoy how each author creates a great short story that features their characters and general storylines. It’s a must read!