Friday, December 30, 2016

REVIEW: Sugar Cookie Murder

Sugar Cookie Murder
Author: Joanne Fluke

"You have got to stop finding dead people, Hannah. People are going to get the wrong impression of you!''

Sugar Cookie Murder is the 6th book in the Hannah Swensen Mystery series by Joanne Fluke. Hannah owns a bakery in Lake Eden, Minnesota. In between baking cupcakes, cookies, pies and all things sugary and delightful, she also has a bad habit of finding dead bodies. In her sixth adventure, Hannah and many other residents of Lake Eden are gathered together for the annual Christmas Buffet. This year, the buffet is also the final test for recipes gathered for the Lake Eden Holiday Buffet Cookbook.

Festivities are in full force when a blizzard hits and Hannah discovers a dead body in the parking lot. It seems Martin Dublinski's new wife, a beautiful girl he married in Las Vegas after a whirlwind 5-day affair, has been stabbed to death with an antique cake knife. Everyone is trapped by the snowstorm at the community center.....and one of them is a murderer.

I love this series. It's cute and fun, plus the recipes are yummy. Sugar Cookie Murder is a fun, quick read. And, the book includes 200 pages of recipes ranging from appetizers, to desserts & even main courses. All the recipes mentioned in the book are included! :)

Hannah is funny and feisty, although I do wish she would make up her mind about her love life. She has been stringing along 2 men for six books now....and I do wish she would just choose one. I have several more Hannah Swensen books on my TBR shelf....I hope that further on in the series she makes up her mind! The love triangle thing is getting a bit old. I do love how Joanne Fluke portrays her small town characters with humor and love. The relationship between Hannah, her sister and her mother is hilarious and touching at the same time.

I do have to suspend all reality when reading most cozy mysteries. If one person continually found dead bodies all the time, I do believe they would find themselves interrogated and arrested, rather than being allowed to help the police with the investigation. But.....it's part of the fun of cozy mysteries to just forget about that fact. Jessica Fletcher found a dead body every week on Murder, She Wrote and nobody batted an eye. So it's ok for Hannah Swensen to discover a body in each of the 21 books in this series. Why not? :) I can ignore it if you can.

The Hannah Swensen series is currently being made into movies by Hallmark Movies & Mysteries Channel. The series of movies is called Murder, She Baked. So far, they have adapted four of the novels: The Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder, The Plum Pudding Murder, Peach Cobbler Murder and Fudge Cupcake Murder. The movies don't follow the book plots completely, but are fun to watch just the same. As always, the books are better than the movies, in my opinion.

There are 20 books in the Hannah Swensen Mystery series, with the 21st, Banana Cream Pie Murder, scheduled for release on Feb 28th, 2017. There is also a collection of recipes, Joanne Fluke's Lake Eden Cookbook. For more information on the author and her books, check out her website here

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