A Provence Cozy Mystery: Book 2
Release Date: May 23, 2020
Pastry chef Julie Cavallo unmasked a killer.
Life is good once again…
until her sous chef becomes a murder suspect.
Julie is certain Eric didn’t kill his ex-con dad.
The question is, can she prove it to the lead investigator?
Alone she can’t.
She needs Beldoc’s best — and, ahem, only — amateur sleuth team to get back in the game.
Luckily, her shrewd sister, their feisty grandma and toe-worshiping dog are up for the challenge.
Besides, Julie hopes to enlist the help of one hot gendarme…
Clueless but committed, the detective trio sets out to expose the real killer.
I stumbled upon this book and really wished I’d read the first book before reading this second book in this series. I always prefer to read series in order, but know that it’s not always possible. All throughout the story, I felt like I was missing something. I felt that the author just jumped in, assuming that I’d read the first book, and so there wasn’t the normal re-introduction of the characters and the locale. For example, I was confused for the first couple of chapters. I couldn’t place where the book was set and kept wondering why there were French words being thrown in here and there. Then something was mentioned about Paris, and the lightbulb clicked. But I could mostly get past all that.
The mystery was cute. It wasn’t terribly deep, and Julie and her posse really stumbled around more than actually do any hardcore sleuthing. In fact, the story just rather ended, and I wasn’t satisfied with how it wrapped up. I felt that more time in the story was spent on Julie’s relationships than with her business or the murder mystery. It just didn’t feel very balanced to me.
In the end, I had a hard time connecting with the characters and their situation. It wasn’t a bad story, but it didn’t have me turning the pages because I had to know how it ended. I”m not sure that I’ll read more in this series. I do suggest that if you want to try this series, you start with the first book, or you may have that feeling of missing something as well.
Ana T. Drew is the evil mastermind behind the recent series of murders in the fictional French town of Beldoc. When she is not writing cozy mysteries or doing mom-and-wife things, she can be found watching “The Rookie” to help her get over “Castle”. She lives in Paris but her heart is in Provence.
Visit ana-drew.com for a free cookbook and a game!
