Synopsis

Featuring over a dozen cookie and dessert recipes from The Cookie Jar—Hannah Swensen’s famous bakery, this festive new Christmas mystery from the Queen of Culinary Cozies is just the holiday treat you need this season!

Review

Christmas Cupcake Murder by Joanne Fluke

My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I really wanted to like this one more than I did. Loved the cover, definitely drew me in! Very adorable, the beautiful contrasting icy blue and red color scheme, cute graphic, that extra reflective pearl which looked so pretty in person!

However something about it overall just didn’t work for me. The writing style seemed so incredibly different compared to other books I’ve read by the author.

My favorite part of this book was the recipes. The recipe font, placement, instructions, hints, and preferences were easy to read and very accessible. I’m not as keen on powdered sugared icing and boxed cake recipe variations though. I prefer traditional buttercream and cake from scratch myself. I’d pick my own grain and ground it into flour by hand if I could. Not completely ragging on the recipes, they certainly have their place in life (I will say readers and bakers who love simple recipes with ingredients they may already have on hand will absolutely love them), but for myself, I became so much happier to see there were others to choose from that were a little more what I would consider to be closer to homemade. And when I get some pickles, I will be looking forward to trying out the Rainbow Pickles recipes. So weird, made with unsweetened Jello, I really want to try it. That and the eggnog.

What I wasn’t keen on was that this book so incredibly slow! Read like a middle grade chapter book with loads of overly detailed plot filler. The plot, character development, barely trudged along. Oh my. It took a lot of effort to get through the first 30 pages. Then I skim read through the rest, stopping mostly at the recipes.

Every littlest action by the characters took was documented. Dialogue was flat and overly detailed. A lot of telling without much interesting nuance or subtle expression of intent or deeper connection and purpose. There was not a lot of thinking involved on my behalf. The characters didn’t show their personality, they hardly went anywhere physically, mentally, or emotionally. They were just there, doing day to day things in the most detailed way.

Nothing really mysterious either unfortunately. I was expectantly waiting for the stranger in the cafe to die off or someone to fall off the ladder with a cupcake in hand.

A bit disappointing, a big deviation from what I’ve known in the past books. I’ll have to check out the others.

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