Coffee & Cream Café Mysteries Series: Book 2
Publication Date: November 21, 2023
From author Lena Gregory comes a tasty new mystery with a killer twist…
Danika Delaney is thrilled to have taken over her uncle Jimmie’s old fashioned malt shop on eastern Long Island and is working hard to make it her own. In an effort to increase business, Danika invites a mystery writer to the Coffee & Cream Café for a discussion and book signing. Things seem to be going well, until a guest shows up and confronts the author, accusing him of plagiarizing his work. Embarrassed by the incident, Danika goes to the inn where the writer is staying the following morning, hoping to apologize and offer him another chance to return. What she finds instead is his dead body—beside a cup of poisoned coffee! Now it’s up to Danika to find out who wanted to silence the author… before the killer decides to write Danika a not-so-happy ending!
Grounds for Murder by author Lena Gregory kept me turning the pages to see whodunnit. This cozy mystery is set in Long Island, New York, with lots of small businesses, gossips, family, friends, murders, and other crimes that Dani always seems to be in the middle of helping to solve. Especially when they are personal, and she feels targeted.
This is the second book in the Coffee & Cream Cafe Mystery, and I would have benefited from reading Murder A La Mode, the book that began the series, since it was sometimes difficult to connect the dots to the present based on things that happened previously.
The relationships between friends and neighbors were strong and had a depth to them. Everyone in town seemed to know each other and where to gather for all the gossip. There were crimes other than the murders that were committed that were against Dani in her café and other places in town. She had a good support system, but they weren’t always there, or were they?
There were some laugh-out-loud moments, and I liked how she, Gwen, and Eli, her partners to help the police solve the crimes, interacted. The story was sometimes choppy as we jumped between storylines, but by the end, everything was tied together, and there was closure with solving the crimes. The whodunnit surprised me, which is always a nice touch.
Grounds for Murder is a cozy mystery set in a small town with lots of coffee and desserts that had me sleuthing right along with Dani and the others! 
Lena grew up in a small town on the south shore of eastern Long Island, but she recently traded in cold, damp, gray winters for the warmth and sunshine of central Florida, where she now lives with her husband, three kids, son-in-law, and four dogs. Her hobbies include spending time with family, reading, and walking. Her love for writing developed when her youngest son was born and didn’t sleep through the night. She works full-time as a writer and a freelance editor and is a member of Sisters in Crime.
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Thank you so much for such a wonderful review! And thank you for sharing the release of Grounds for Murder!