Series Rating:
In the first of a new series, after Lindsey Bakeswell catches her celebrity chef fiancé sizzling in the arms of another woman, Lindsey leaves big city Wall Street for small town Beacon Harbor, Michigan to pursue her own passion as a pastry baker–and gets mixed up in someone’s sweet taste of revenge…
More interested in kneading dough than adding it up, Lindsey’s breakup inspired her to set up the shop she always wanted in a place that always made her happy. She’d spent many childhood summers near this beach community and converting the old run-down lighthouse into a bakery café and home offers a perfect fresh start for Lindsey and her devoted Newfoundland dog, Wellington.
But not everyone in town has a sweet tooth. The preservation society won’t have the lighthouse’s history sugar coated by lattes and cakes–and a protest group crashes Lindsey’s Memorial Day opening. Then her ex-fiancé Jeffrey Plank and his girlfriend Mia Wong arrive to trash the place. In the ensuing chaos Mia chokes on a donut and dies.
An autopsy reveals cyanide in Mia’s bloodstream and Lindsey is the police’s prime suspect. To clear her name, she’s going to need to combine ingredients found in the town’s checkered past to uncover the identity of a desperate killer…
Characters
Recurring Characters
- Lindsey Bakewell – main character, baker, came from NY to open the bakeshop
- Wellington – Lindsey’s big dong
- Betty – real estate agent and eventual friend of Lindsey
- Tuck – cute police officer
- Kennedy – Lindsey’s posh best friend
- Ellie Montague Bakewell – Lindsey’s mother, retired model
- Captain Willy Rigs – haunts the lighthouse, was murdered a long time ago
- Rory – Lives next to Lindsey
Other Characters
- Fiona Davis – boycotts the lighthouse being turned into a bakeshop
- Jeffrey – Lindsey’s ex fiancé that cheated on her with his pastry chef
- Mia – Jeffrey’s pastry chef, the one he cheated on Lindsey with
- Dylan – Lindsey’s assistant baker
My Review
What a great cozy! I am excited it’s part of a series so I will get to continue on.
Spoilers/Summary
Betty’s godchildren Dylan and Mike were running a drug smuggling ring on her land and the bakery.
Dylan was her assistant baker, she kept trying to poison Betty but failing. She tried with coffee and a sandwich. Rory saves Lindsey when Dylan and them tried to kill her. Rory as a Navy SEAL that was watching the drug smuggling.
Chad had tried to let Lindsey know that Dylan had been stealing from the bakery but then died from the poisoned sandwich before he could tell her.
Captain Willy might have been related to Betty.
Murder at the Christmas Cookie Bake-Off (Book #2)
Tucked away inside an old lighthouse in Beacon Harbor, Michigan, bakeshop café owner Lindsey Bakewell is ready to make her first Christmas in town shine bright. But her merry plans crumble fast when murder appears under the mistletoe…
With the spirit of the holidays wafting through the Beacon Bakeshop, Lindsey thinks she has the recipe for the sweetest Christmas ever–winning the town-wide cookie bake-off. Unfortunately, striving for a picture-perfect December in Beacon Harbor is a lot like biting into stale shortbread. Low on staff and bombarded by visits from family, Lindsey can barely meet demands at work, let alone summon the confidence to face fierce competition…
Self-appointed Christmas know-it-all Felicity Stewart is determined to take the top spot in the bake-off, and she’s not afraid to dump a little coal in everyone’s stocking to do it. Just as the competition heats up, everything falls apart when the judge is found dead–and covered in crumbs from Lindsey’s signature cookie!
Solving a murder was never on Lindsey’s wish list. But with her reputation on the line during the happiest time of the year, she’ll need to bring her best talents to the table in order to sift out the true Christmas Cookie culprit.
Characters
- Felicity Stewart – owns the year round Christmas store; claims to be the cookie baking expert, owns the shop with her husband
- Mrs. Nichols – helps Lindsey with the baking for her store
- Ginger and Bradley – other bake off participants; Bradley owns the new restaurant in town
- Chevy Chambers – TV Star Chef brought in to judge the cookie bake off
My Review
I love me a Christmas Cozy! The ending had a nice little twist to it as well.
I started to really enjoy Lindsey’s best friend Kennedy. I found her to be slightly annoying the previous book but have found her loyal and entertaining in this one.
It is very handy to have the ending where the police officer give a long summary to tie the plot up 🙂 I appreciated it though.
Spoilers/Summary
The TV Star Chef was a womanizer. He would take advantage of women. He promises winning the bake-off and a TV show if the contestants sleep with him. While the two other female contestants fall into his trap, Lindsey doesn’t. This wasn’t the first time he has taken advantage of women Sophia Argyle-Huffman (Bradley’s mom) first claimed to be the murderer. She had targeted Lindsey to sabotage her to ensure the her son would with the cookie competition. She said she killed him because he had promised to write a good review for his son’s new restaurant. He wrote a horrible review after engaging in an affair with her. She had had no intention of killing him but then decided to when he showed up in the town. In reality, Bradley actually killed him and his mother tried to cover it up for him. Lindsey’s parents buy a house in Beacon Harbor. Mrs. Nicholls disappears at the end, was she Mrs. Clause?
Murder at the Blueberry Festival (#3)
After a career on Wall Street, Lindsey is making a different kind of dough in a pretty lakeside village, and the upcoming blueberry festival—including the pie-eating contest her bakery is hosting—is the highlight of the summer. But soon Beacon Harbor runs into a patch of trouble.
A local real estate agent gets pranked. A parade float gets pelted with water balloons. It’s all laughed off until the stunts start escalating—and looking more like sabotage. As the event turns into a debacle complete with rampaging goats, Lindsey’s sweetheart, a former SEAL, starts investigating. But the juicy mystery takes a bitter turn when a man—dressed up as a Viking—is found dead in a boat, and it’s no longer mischief but murder . . .
Trigger Warnings:
Murder, Alzheimers
Characters
New Characters
- Lars – hearty laugh, in the veterans coffee club
- Anders – Lars’ son
- Grayson – glass blower/artist, his art sculpture was pulled down and shattered during his show
- Daphne Rivers – owner of lots of goats, her goats were stolen and let loose during the brats part of the show
- Clara – Lars’ goat
- Mayor Rod Jeffers – his choir was interrupted with water balloons during the parade
- Winifred – her blueberry pie was swapped with one filled with rats
My Review
All the recipes she mentions made me want to cook up some blueberry treats. Specifically, the blueberry dressing for a salad sounded very intriguing. I’ll paste it below so I can MAYBE remember to make it sometime.
The ending got pretty deep and was a little emotional. For most of the book, I didn’t know how it would get tied together and seemed to not really be going anywhere, but then the ending tied it all together so nicely and made it all so great.
Spoilers/Summary
Lars was murdered by poison. They used a poisonous berry that looked like blueberries in a blueberry pie. Grayson, the glass maker, was the killer. Lars was someone he had always loved. When Lars started to forget things and then got to the point that the was going to have to go to assisted living, he attempted suicide. Grayson walked in on him and Lars asked him to kill him or he would kill himself. Lars decided to kill him mercifully with the pie. He was going to send him off for a viking send off, but the goat jumped into the boat and wouldn’t leave. He was supposed to float and that be it but the goat had other plans. Grayson had helped Lars pull the pranks to relive the best day of his life when he was a teenager at the first Blueberry Festival and did all the same pranks. Rory decides to open up a scuba diving school to teach how to do scuba and fishing.