This holiday cozy is a seasonal and suspenseful mystery spiced with some Hollywood glamour and drama set in the seaside town of Santa Sofia. It’s the 7th in the Bread Bakery series and features Ivy Culpepper who works at the tourist town’s famous bread bakery. The bakery is hired by Eliza Fox a young Hollywood star, to cater a glitzy Victorian themed Christmas party and Ivy is invited to discretely photograph the festivities. The party ends suddenly when the body of notorious tabloid reporter is discovered dead on the seaside rocky shore plunged from the backyard cliff.
The series’ characters include Ivy’s best friend from childhood, now the town sheriff, a circle of older friends called the Blackbird Ladies, her attentive and understanding restaurant owner boyfriend and the bakery staff; it’s a diverse and likeable bunch. Since it’s the Holidays everyone is in overdrive and the book’s pacing echoes the seasonal excitement with a plot quickly developing with new facts and twists and turns.
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This series is just the ticket for armchair travelers who enjoy traditional mysteries, the amateur detective, Lana, is a former investigative journalist, blacklisted after an expose turned in a career ending disaster who re-invents herself as a tour guide for Wanderlust Tours. She enjoys the travel, the people and the perks but things don’t always follow the itinerary. In this Mother and Daughter themed Mother’s Day tour to Amsterdam the first surprise is when Lana’s estranged mother joins the tour and events go downhill from there.
This is a mystery and a second chances story set in early 1960s rural England and tells the story of an ordinary middle aged single woman who buys a dilapidated cottage, Sixpenny Holding, hoping to finally begin living life on her terms. She dreams of writing romantic novels of suspense and this ambition is complicated when her widowed brother’s daughter’s caregiver, her aunt, dies suddenly and Marian finds herself raising an opinionated 5-year-old. Both are initially wary of each other but slowly things improve and a cousin, a withdrawn 11-year-old, temporarily joins the tiny household together with a kitten. It sounds too sweet but it’s not, mostly because Marian is a combination of down to earth and whimsical that is in tune with the ramshackle ancient cottage.