Member Reviews

Maggie Miller is trying to trying to figure out how a dead body got into her storeroom. Table Rock is strange down kind of like x-flies meets hippies. I did enjoy Maggie the mystery could us a little more tightening up but all in all it was a decent read.

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I really enjoyed the tone and style of the book: it is an easy read and is pretty funny throughout. The characters are varied and believable. However, although I expected the sedate pace from a cozy mystery, I was a bit disappointed by how thin the murder mystery plot was. There wasn't a lot to it and felt very stretched out over the book. It took me a long time to finish and it was the humour that kept me coming back to it.

Thank you to NetGalley and Severn House for the ARC of this book.

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I suppose many people already knew Maggie Miller from the first book of her series – I didn´t. I kindly got this version from NetGalley in exchange for a review, but I don´t think the fact that I had not read the #1 book affected at all this reading.
So, Maggie Miller is the owner of a beignet café in Table Rock and one day, when she was helping Clive, her neighbor that together with Johnny, run a wedding store called The Hitching Post, by taking them to Markie´s Masterpieces (a cake shop) for the final details of an event. However, they would never think that they would find a dead body under a 700-pound cake – Lisa Willoughby´s body.
Lisa used to work for Clive and Johnny before, and they were actually suing her, so they became the first suspects – and it got worse when one of them confessed.
However, throughout the story we can see Lisa was a complete persona non grata, with many people having reasons to want her dead.
Beignets, Brides and Bodies is indeed what the title says: a cozy mystery. To my personal taste, Maggie is too “forced” in the sense of trying to be funny; the book starts getting good around 65%. There are many not funny jokes she makes, trying to be ironic, but I didn´t buy them.
Downsides:
Her ex-husband appearance was somewhat weird; I think the author could have explored it a little bit more. As well as Lisa´s brother and his friend, since they have lied about some things regarding the investigations.
The fact that Maggie was accusing each and every one of murder was a bit tiring, too, because I at least did not have the slightest idea of who the killer was, despite this Russian roulette she did.
Upsides:
Nevertheless, it was a great book; I can´t say I haven´t had fun reading it. I truly had no idea of who the killer was, and I really like this situation, because it means the mystery was really well structured, and that there are no “loose wires”. Therefore, I invite you all to try to find Lisa´s killer amongst all those beignets and pounds of cake!
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