Final Roasting Place (A Cook-Off Mystery #2)

Author:  Devon Delaney
Genre:   Mystery

Mass Market Paperback; Digital Book
ISBN #:  9781496714459
Kensington Publishing
289 Pages
$7.99; $6.89 Amazon
September 25, 2018

⭐⭐⭐

Erno Oliveri made sure to be on set for his daughter's cook-off appearance on Sunny Side Up with Brett and Carmell.  Or as it's now known, Sunny Side Up with Carmell and Brett -- since ambitious young Carmell seems to have the producer and station owner eating out of her hand.  But the important news is that Sherry has bested the competition with her Spicy Toasted Chickpea and Almond appetizer and clinched the spatula-shaped trophy.  It's her shining moment -- until everything goes dark.

A quick-moving storm has knocked out power to the studio -- and when the lights come back up, Carmell is at her desk with a sharp object lodged in her neck.  The weapon is an unusual tool, used by craftsmen who make hooked rugs.  Has someone taken corporate backstabbing to a new level, and framed Erno in the process?  If Sherry's going to protect her dad and their family name, she has to find out where he was when the lights went out...

✽✽✽✽✽✽✽

Sherry Oliveri has entered yet another cook-off and won top prize at Channel Twelve television station.  While cleaning up her things she sees her father having a heated argument with the station's anchor, Carmell Gordy.  After finally getting everything together, the news is on, and Sherry's father needs to use the restroom, so she waits behind the camera person for him.  But there's a blackout from a storm, and when the lights come on again, Carmell is dead.  When Sherry finds out that a tool from her father's Ruggery shop was used as the instrument of death, she's horrified.  But knowing her father isn't a killer makes her wonder how someone got it.  When she finds out that her father is a suspect, Sherry will do anything to find the killer, even if it means not leaving it to the police to sort out.  Hopefully, she'll be able to stay one step ahead and outsmart someone who's doing their best to frame her dad...

This is the second book in the series, and I have to say that I wasn't impressed by it for several reasons.  A good cozy mystery must have, in my book, three things to make it a decent series:

1. A good mystery;
2. Conflict and/or danger;
3. A love interest of some sort.

Let me explain these things:  the mystery was there and at the same time it wasn't.  The main part of the story was Sherry making food/going to prepare food, and telling us about it.  (I looked at the recipes and honestly, none of them sounded appetizing; but then again, that's just me).  Anyway, where we should have had a little suspense about the murder, there was none.  

As far as conflict and/or danger goes, I don't mean conflict in the form of an 'evil nemesis,' (which I absolutely loathe as far as that goes), but in the protagonist and perhaps setting up others' backs by asking questions, or the murderer thinking the protagonist is 'getting too close' and then doing something about it (such as breaking into their home, sending them threats, trying to cause 'accidents', etc.)  None of that was present in this book.

The love interest:  I'm not talking about kissy-face here.  The love interest can even be peripheral and still be interesting.  Maybe there's an attraction and we know it and yet they don't act on it, or another reason why they haven't yet gotten together, but you know the attraction is there.  You can feel it.  Sadly, this book hasn't even got that.  There is no love interest looming in the background, nor even in the foreground.

So, even though this book was a mystery, at the same time it wasn't, considering none of the above were present, and the murderer was apparent early on, which really isn't a big deal if the book is interesting enough to carry it through, but I got bored with all the talk about Sherry's food, Frances's pickles, etc.  By the time we got to the killer being caught (as we know all along they will be), I wasn't much interested anymore, I just wanted to know the motive, so I finished the book.

Anyway, I may or may not continue this series in hoping for the best, but if I do begin another book, I will say that if it goes the way of the first two, I am done with the series.  Three stars for the writing.

https://www.amazon.com/Final-Roasting-Place-Cook-Off-Mystery/dp/1496714458/ref=

Goodreads:  https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3452674762

More on Devon Delaney's Books:  https://www.fantasticfiction.com/d/devon-delaney/