Parker Valentine is about to realize her dream of opening her own winery. The wine is ready, curious customers are coming through the door, and then comes the wine critic. She is desperate to make a good impression but it seems he thinks her wine, her lovely chardonnay, is bitter.
And then he dies.
Talk about your lousy grand openings.
Soon the hashtag #killerchardonnay is trending. Whoever said
that any publicity is good publicity never had someone die under questionable
circumstances in an inopportune place and quite possibly from the product being
sold at aforementioned place. People are
staying away in droves. Parker herself is a suspect, of course.
All she can do is try to figure out who did the critic in, and
for that she’ll need all the help she can get.
Good thing she has a trusty best friend, a handsome detective, an even
more handsome chef, and her goof-off brother for help!
This book reminded me strongly of Ellie Alexander’s Bakeshop Mystery series. The writing flows, the characters show
some—well, character—and the plot is decent.
There is some nice description of wine flavors, which I found
interesting, and some details about the wine-making process. Not enough to do homemade, you understand.
There’s also a cat, Zinfandel, who shows up to be fed. It looks as if Parker is going to choose the
chef, but the author makes both boyfriend candidates sound really dreamy, so if
she changes her mind down the road she’s already paved the way.
Will I read another? I
don’t know. Under normal circumstances,
I’d say yes fairly quickly. This time,
there were a couple of lines early on in the story that irritated me and
probably made me more critical of the book than I would have been normally. It had its share of the modern cozy clichés
that I don’t care for but that ordinarily I would shrug off and hope for better
later—it is a first in series, after all. However, because I was already
annoyed I noticed them more. This is
strictly a personal perception and I am sure it would bother few others.
Will I recommend it to someone wanting a career girl cozy
mystery romance? Probably.
The books in order are:
Killer Chardonnay
A Pairing to Die For
Mulled to Death (Oct. 2021)
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