Town in a Cinnamon Toast
A Candy Holliday Murder Mystery #7
By B.B. Haywood
ISBN#9780425278550
www.holidaysblueberryacres.com
Brought to you by OBS Reviewer Daniele
Synopsis: 
The much-anticipated wedding of local resident Maggie Tremont and popular baker Herr Georg has stirred up the usually quiet coastal town of Cape Willington. To make sure the wedding of the year goes off without a hitch, the participants gather at a pre-wedding dinner—everyone, that is, except the best man…
Worried, Candy, the maid of honor, goes looking for him, finally tracking him down to the upstairs archive rooms at the English Point Lighthouse and Museum. There’s only one problem: he’s dead, struck over the head with a bottle of champagne, the same exclusive brand that was ordered for the dinner. Before the wedding plans fall flat, Candy rushes to find the murderer, unearthing a conspiracy that could spill over into the whole town… (Goodreads)
Review:
Spring has finally spring in Cape Willington, Maine, and love is in the air. Local baker Georg and our protagonist Candy’s best friend Maggie are finally tying the knot, and the wedding party comes together for a nice dinner before everything gets crazy busy in the days leading up to the wedding. However, Julius, the best man, has failed to show and Candy, the maid of honor, goes in search of him. She finds him at the village’s lighthouse and museum, apparently conked on the head with one of the wedding party’s bottles of champagne. It looks like Julius, the unofficial town historian, must have uncovered something unsavory in his research about the town’s oldest families to lead to such an end. Candy and Georg find themselves on the police’s radar since she found the body and he supplied the bubbly for the dinner. Candy feels she owes it to Julius’s memory and to her friends to get to the bottom of the murder, and she hopes she is interpreting Julius’s clues that he left behind correctly, before the couple says “Ido”.
Town in a Cinnamon Toast is the seventh book in the Candy Holliday Murder Mystery series, and it is sure to please fans of the series.
I have only read one other installment in the series, and I think this hindered my enjoyment. It continues a storyline that is woven through several of the other books. Though Haywood does a decent job of explaining things, I quickly established that I was not interested in the plot focused on land deeds and conspiracy. The story moved along at a crawl, and I found myself easily distracted while reading (this is unusual for me). Instead of enriching the Maine atmosphere, I thought the copious details dry and bland. I anticipated reading all sorts of tidbits about blueberry farming and a picturesque setting, but there is little to do with Candy’s day to day life within the pages. I understand that the focus is the wedding, but still. Approximately two hundred pages in, the action picked up, but barely.
I do not feel like I got to know any of the characters very well. They were flat and the dialogue stilted at times. I like Georg and Doc Holliday the best. Candy is well-meaning and intelligent, but, in my opinion, her abilities are farfetched.
Unfortunately, the Candy Holliday series is just not for me, but I do not hesitate to recommend it to others, especially fans of the series. Isn’t the beauty of a genre full of different authors and settings is one’s ability to find something for everyone?
