Genre: Mystery
Mass Market Paperback; Digital Book (LP Also Available)
ISBN #: 9781617731426
Kensington Publishing
300 Pages
$7.99; $6.99 Amazon
August 17, 2016
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Val Deniston certainly has her plate full running a café, dabbling with recipes, and helping her grandfather prepare for the town's upcoming tri-centennial celebration, but she's grown fond of her new life in the Chesapeake Bay town of Bayport...
So when Val is asked to reclaim her old position as a cookbook publicist in New York City, she puts off her decision in order to help her grandfather perfect his chocolate fondue for the weekend festivity's dessert cook-off. But after the opening ceremonies, Val finds a houseguest strangled to death in her grandfather's backyard. She suspects a classic case of mistaken identity, especially when another guest nearly bids her life a fondue farewell. Now it's up to Val to keep the killer from making another stab at murder...
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Val Deniston lost her job in New York as a cookbook publicist, and also her fiancé when she caught him cheating. Now she's created a new life for herself in Bayport, living with her grandfather in his old Victorian and running the café at the local tennis and racket club. She also has a new boyfriend in Gunnar Swenson, and everything seems to be going her way.
She's also helping her grandfather create recipes as The Codger Cook -- writing for the local newspaper, but if truth were told, it's her recipes and he's "borrowed" them so everyone thinks he can cook and he'll get local recognition. After Val has helped solve a couple of local murders, her grandfather also wants to become a PI and is taking online courses to do so. But now he's planning on a recipe of his own - a chocolate fondue - that he wants no help with and intends to enter in the local cook-off for the town's tricentennial celebration.
Val has also convinced him as a way to make money would be to take in temporary boarders during the festival. Her grandfather, unfortunately, has also rented out Val's room and insists she stay with her cousin Monique. As if that weren't bad enough, Val's mother calls and says she's coming for a visit, and Val's ex, Tony, shows up unexpected and unannounced, causing problems between her and Gunnar.
But Val's determined to make it work. With cooking breakfasts for the four people in a wedding party that are staying with them, driving to her cousin's, working at the festival and the café, trying to avoid Tony and see her mother and Gunnar, you'd think that would be enough. But it isn't: on the first night at the Victorian, one of the wedding party is murdered. Now Val's drawn into another investigation -- and since the bride-to-be is obviously being threatened, she needs to decide who's trying to kill the people in the wedding party, and why...
This is the third book in the series, and it's starting to grow on me. While I enjoy the writing style and I do like Val, since she has what I call grit in sticking to her obligations, she allows people to walk all over her, and that gets to me. I still haven't been able to warm up to her grandfather. Yes, he has moments of care for her and it shows, but I still think he's taking advantage of her in more ways than one. It's almost as if he expects her to do what he wants, but I see him give nothing in return. It's difficult to care for someone who's so selfish as a person. One moment of kindness does not make up for hours of grief.
I also haven't been able to warm up to Gunnar. He supposedly is her boyfriend, but he never makes any time for her. He makes excuses why he can't spend time with her; what kind of relationship is that? I'd rather see her with someone who appreciates her; but if she allows her grandfather to walk all over her, then I guess she'll let Gunnar walk all over her, too. Even her mother nags her, and she listens to it. Val also mentions as how Bethany is just a kid at twenty-five; Val is thirty-two. She's seven years older but apparently thinks that's much older than Bethany. Hmmm...
Anyway, the mystery is done nicely, and while the clues are there, it was a little difficult to figure out who the murderer was and why; but when I did, I enjoyed watching Val put all the pieces together as she always does; even though in this book she was never in danger, it was still a lot of fun to see everyone's reactions as she went through the clues one by one until the killer was figured out.
When the ending comes and everything is said and done, it was for the most part an easy read that can be done in one evening, and worth the venture into Val's world. Recommended.
https://www.amazon.com/Final-Fondue-Five-Ingredient-Mystery-Corrigan/dp/1410490963/ref
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3391654513
More on Maya Corrigan's Books: https://www.fantasticfiction.com/c/maya-corrigan/
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