The Chocolate Cupid Killings

The Chocolate Cupid Killings

Joanna Carl

Genre: Mystery

Summary (from Goodreads): Ninth in the scrumptious-and national bestselling-Chocoholic Mystery series. 

TenHuis Chocolade is wall-to- wall with chocolate hearts for Valentine's Day. But Lee is getting no love from Private Detective Derrick Valentine. He's looking for their employee-a woman Lee and her Aunt Nettie have been harboring for an underground railroad-type organization that aids abused women. Luckily, they manage to not spill the cocoa beans and clue him in. But the situation becomes a complex confection when Valentine meets his end. And it's Aunt Nettie who becomes a suspect. Lee will have to find a way to free Nettie of guilt without exposing the innocent-and find a killer with a bitter heart that's definitely not made of chocolate...

Review: I was working on puzzles with Nathaniel in the children's section of the library, and Amelia wandered over saying she had picked out all her books.  So I sent her over the adult fiction section of the library and told her to pick out a few books for me to read.  She seemed unsure about how to pick out books for me, so I told her to grab ones that had interesting titles or covers or plots on the back of the book.  This is one of the ones that she chose for me (and the only one that I finished - the others were not my style at all!)  There's the long explanation for why I read this particular book.

This cozy mystery is clearly part of a series, and while the beginning of the book gave pertinent background information, there were definitely things I felt like I had missed because of not reading the first eight books in the series.  It was interesting enough, but a little confusing (perhaps because of all the characters, who would be well-known to readers of the series).  I was mostly mystified as to why Lee felt like she needed to solve all these mysteries herself without police assistance.

Rating: 2 stars