Death by Chocolate Ladyfingers

Death by Chocolate Mystery #9

By Sarah Graves                    

ISBN: 9781496744197

Brought to you by OBS reviewer Andra                   

Summary:

The townsfolk of Eastport, Maine, know the best place to satisfy their sweet tooth is at Jacobia “Jake” Tiptree and Ellie White’s bakery, the Chocolate Moose. But some people living in the island town have more sinister appetites…

As the sun sets on summer in Eastport, local celebrations are in full swing—and Jake and Ellie have their hands full supplying the most decadent of desserts for Eastport High School’s Class of ’97 reunion. Unexpectedly, the gathering includes ex-spouses, Cindy Munson and Terry Lawson, seemingly reunited as a family with their precocious 6-year-old daughter, Ivy. But when Cindy’s body is discovered murdered in Lawson’s car that night, suspicion immediately falls upon the tech-financier, who was once also Eastport High’s most notorious school bully.

As the evidence stacks against him, Terry becomes the prime suspect, leaving young Ivy in the care of child services. Remembering her own experiences in foster care, Jake volunteers to look after the little girl while conducting her own investigation into the night of the dance with Ellie.

But someone doesn’t want the amateur sleuths digging up past, humiliating secrets that may point to vengeful present-day motives—even if it means adding Jake and Ellie to a killer’s body count . . . (Goodreads)

Review:

I haven’t read any of the other books in the Death by Chocolate Mystery series by Sarah Graves as of yet, so this is my introduction to this author. Not sure I would recommend starting the series at book 9, but I did.

There are interesting characters in the series, and the mystery surrounding the death of Cindy Munson was well plotted. The ‘whodunit’ was not revealed until the end – which is a good thing as I truly like my cozy mysteries that way.

It is highly suggested (at least for the copy of the book I got) that the editing be reviewed:

• I was in chapter 2 when Ellie and Jake were talking about Ivy when out of nowhere there are a couple of sentences with Lizzie mentioned or her speaking – what gives with that? And then for the rest of the section – seems like Jake is having a conversation with Lizzie. Turns out when I read the next section, one sentence is written again (though at least this time it is after Lizzie actually shows up in the scene). Very confusing. And when Lizzie is introduced into the scene, we come upon more redundancy. Clarity and better editing is needed. Seems that both Ellie and Jake are at the bakery but without clarification, it tends to be confusing.  Took me approximately three to four times of reading all of this over to get who was in the scene and how the conversation was flowing between various characters.
• And unfortunately, I cannot forget spelling errors when “grave” was most definitely meant to be “gravel”.
• …”So I went ass the street to set it all up with Bridget”? 
• “…on a side tabl,e”
• I could go on, but I won’t. Just to say – all of the editing errors definitely distracted me from enjoying the story.  Maybe Kensington Cozies should hire more proofreaders? 🙂

And their attempt to be cute (one would hope) that was not cute in my opinion was when they used “vewy” in a sentence:

“But I needn’t have bothered trying to be vewy, vewy quiet; the porch light was on…”

Some of the descriptions used sure had caught my attention in a big (and good) way:

“Ack! The stool toppled one way, I tumbled the other, and while the ground was soft and there were no barberry bushes here, there were ants boiling up out of the ant hill that I’d just disturbed by landing on it. Red ants-and boy, were they mad.”

I did like the cover art – how can one go wrong with chocolate ladyfingers and a cute dog on the cover?

It is my fondest hope that by going back to the beginning of the series, I might become more empathetic to the main protagonists and that their backstories will provide the needed history for me to love (or at least like) this series (though careful editing would be very helpful).

As with any cozy mysteries, the journey to discover whodunit is what is most important, and I feel that Death by Chocolate Ladyfingers was sufficient in this regard.