Murder at the Summer Cheese Festival         

Silver Springs Mysteries #1

By Jodie Morgan       

ISBN: 9781923587007

Brought to you by OBS reviewer Andra                   

Summary:

Laura Evans thought trading her high-stress Boston restaurant career for small-town Vermont charm would bring peace. Instead, she finds herself knee-deep in cheddar and conspiracy when a body turns up at the General Store after a pre-festival cheese tasting ahead of the Summer Cheese Festival. And her boss Maggie is made the prime suspect.

The festival is less than two weeks away and with the store’s reputation threatened, Laura can’t stand by and watch her new life crumble like aged parmesan. With the help of her observant landlady, Evelyn Chan, she discovers beneath the town’s picture-perfect surface lies a complex web of rivalries, family secrets, and scandals.

And when there’s an entire festival’s worth of suspects, she must separate friend from foe before it’s too late… (Goodreads)

Review:

Murder at the Summer Cheese Festival is the first book in the Silver Springs Mysteries series as well as the first book by Jodie Morgan that I have read. While not super wowed by the story, I enjoyed the read well enough to finish the book. I usually do finish cozy mysteries as they are good, fun escapism.

The book begins with the annual cheese festival a mere two weeks away. Laura Evans, a new resident of Silver Springs (previously from Boston where she had a highly stressful restaurant career) is working in the Silver Springs General Store café. The slower pace suits Laura just fine – until a food critic (Jeremy Blackwood) who is in town for the cheese festival is found dead on the property near the general store! And the prime suspect for this murder is none other than Laura’s boss – Maggie. This is because many years earlier, Jeremy had written a bad review, which nearly tanked the general store and eatery. Laura, along with her landlord Evelyn Chan, take it upon themselves to try and solve the murder and clear Maggie’s name before the end of the cheese festival.

Laura and Evelyn ferret out the list of possible suspects and begin the process of working through that list. This is where I tended to get a wee bit bored as the pace seemed occasionally VERY slow.  The journey to the end was filled with meeting many local townspeople – many of whom had some sort of unpleasant interaction with Jeremy, thus muddying the potential suspect pool! However, in true cozy mystery style, the amateur sleuths persevere and eventually figure out ‘whodunit’.

I found that the transition from one scene to the next was very abrupt at times (even one day to the next in the storyline was abrupt). This tended to make following the storyline periodically difficult.

The festival setting allowed this reader to take part in the festival through reading about the tastings, demonstrations, and some behind-the-scenes prep. It made me feel as if I was there! I very much enjoyed learning about the various types of cheeses 🙂

As this was the first book in the series, I may give this author another read in the future.