Frosted Yuletide Murder (Cupcake Catering Mystery Series Book 4)

Author:    Kim Davis

Genre:     Mystery

Paperback; Digital Book

ISBN #:    9780999068892

Cinnamon & Sugar Press

302 Pages

$2.99; $9.99 Amazon

December 13, 2021

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Set against the holiday cheer of twinkling lights, costumed carolers, and a festive line of extravagantly decorated boats participating in the annual Christmas boat parade in Newport Beach, California, cupcake caterer Emory Martinez finds that the grinch has crashed the party.  Together with her sister Carrie, Emory is catering a delectable feast of holiday cupcakes and cookies aboard a luxury yacht for the new Mrs. Blair Villman and her guests.

Sparks fly when Carrie comes face-to-face with the hostess, who just happens to be Carrie's high school frenemy, and old grievances are dredged up.  Adding fuel to the fire, Blair's stepson brings his mother, former Mrs. Villman, to the party.  Instead of celebrating holiday cheer, someone seems intent on channeling the Burgermesiter Meisterburger and shutting down Blair's party permanently.  When Emory finds a body aboard the yacht, she needs to discover who iced the victim before the Scrooge ruins not only her livelihood but her freedom as well.

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Emory Martinez makes the desserts -- especially indulgent cupcakes -- for her sister Carrie's catering company, and also for Oceana, her boyfriend Brian's upscale restaurant.  When catering an unknown client's Christmas party aboard a yacht, it's soon discovered that the client, Blair Villman, is an old high school enemy of Carrie's.  While Carrie wouldn't have accepted the job if she'd known, they are already in process and determined to do a good job.  But it's difficult when Blair finds out who the caterer is, and begins vilifying both Carrie and her food to anyone who will listen, making Emory angry.  It doesn't help when the chief steward, Martha Chao, is harassing them at every turn.

Then there's a public fight between Blair and her elderly husband's son, Johnathan Jr., and it's becoming apparent that no one really cares for Blair.  On top of this, Emory and Carrier are going to meet their long-lost half-sister, Vanessa, which has them both excited and anxious.  But before they can do so, Emory finds a body in the freezer on the yacht, and once again she's drawn into a murder investigation...one that makes her a top suspect.  Now she has to clear her name before she can enjoy her holiday -- if she can stay out of prison for murder...

This is the fourth book in the series and I have read them all.  It was a truly enjoyable read, and very entertaining.  While not a lot was centered on Christmas, there was enough throughout to make one aware of the holiday.  It was more or less centered on the murder, which it should be.  The clues were scattered, but I more or less figured out the murderer early on; no big feat as I read a lot of mysteries and it's really never difficult for me anyway.

I liked the way the mystery was played out, and also that we get a glimpse once again into the life of Emory, but not so much as it overpowered the mystery.  The story was written well, and the ending was worth waiting for.  I hope to see that there is another book in this series coming soon, and I do like them quite a bit.  Recommended.

https://www.amazon.com/Frosted-Yuletide-Cupcake-Catering-Mystery/dp/099906889X/ref

Goodreads:    https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4537600364

More on Kim Davis's Books:    https://www.amazon.com/Kim-Davis/e/B093NRS3F2/ref

Framed and Frosted (Cupcake Catering Mystery Series Book 3)

Author:    Kim Davis

Genre:     Mystery

Paperback; Digital Book

ISBN #:    9780999068878

Cinnamon & Sugar Press

328 Pages

$9.99; $2.99 Amazon

June 19, 2021

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Framed and Frosted, the third book in the Cupcake Catering Mystery Series, finds cupcake caterer, Emory Martinez, working at a Laguna Beach society Fourth of July soiree, with her sister and their new employee, Sal.  With a host who seems intent on accosting both catering employees and guests alike, things go from bad to worse when he accuses Sal of murdering his long-dead son.

As the crescendo of exploding fireworks overhead becomes the backdrop for cupcakes and champagne, a deadly murder occurs.  Can Sal and Emory explain why the cupcake host ate, after shoving a trayful of buttercream-frosted cupcakes onto Sal, resulted in his death?  Or will the guests and the detective alike believe that Sal is a murderer?  Emory and her octogenarian employer, Tillie, whip into action to find out who framed Sal after he was frosted by the victim.

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Emory Martinez bakes cupcakes for her sister Carrie's catering company.  While catering a strange dinner for a nasty hostess, Carrie's employee Sal is harassed by the host.  Then the man accosts Emory and pulls her down on his lap.  Determined to finish the job for her sister, she doesn't want anything to do with Mr. Jorgenson again.  But later, while the fireworks are exploding, the drunken host accosts Sal and threatens him; throws cupcakes at him, then dies after eating one.  Naturally the police suspect Sal of being the murder, but both sisters refuse to believe it.  

In her second job as accountant to her octogenarian employer Tillie's son David, she discovers some strange goings-on at David's home.  She reports these to Tillie, and it opens another can of worms for Tillie's family.  Meanwhile Tillie is still trying to set up her grandson Brian with Emory, and for Emory's part, she has unfinished business with her boyfriend Randall.  With three things on her mind, she knows solving the murder is first and foremost.  But neither the police nor the killer see it that way, and Emory is being stalked and targeted...and if she doesn't figure out who's behind it, she might just be the next victim who's permanently baked...

I have read all of the books in this series, and I have to say that this is my favorite so far.  I enjoyed it quite a bit, and Emory is an interesting person.  However, I do have issues with how she constantly describes herself -- as having red 'clown' hair, for one; (there are products out there that handle frizz, and using them would tackle this perfectly) and being chubby.  Nothing wrong with that; but she has low self-esteem, and perhaps more than one walk a day with her dog would take care of some of this.  I really hate it when protagonists describe themselves as lesser to their siblings.  I have four and we are all shapes and sizes, but I never compare myself to them and hope they do the same.  People can be beautiful in all shapes and sizes.  Emory needs to stop denigrating herself.

When Emory starts investigating, a man named Will Trenton, an attorney, offers to help her free Sal.  Touched by his kindness, she agrees.  But Will has secrets of his own, and though he is a good man, she can't help but notice his pallor and wonder why.  Still, they come to help each other in different ways, along with Tillie, and they discover clues to the murder.

When the murder is closing in, Emory's clues are leading her to one person.  But more than that, her life is shaping up to be different from what she expected, and all the clues tie more than one mystery together, leaving Emory with decisions to make that will change her life.

All in all, the murderer wasn't so much a surprise as it could be, nor the motive for the killing, but I did like this tale because of twists that brought everything together.  The ending left us something to look forward to in the next book, and I will be reading it soon.  There are also quite a few recipes in the back of the book also.  Recommended.

https://www.amazon.com/Framed-Frosted-Cupcake-Catering-Mystery/dp/0999068873/ref

Goodreads:    https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4530911842

More on Kim Davis's Books:    https://www.amazon.com/Kim-Davis/e/B093NRS3F2/ref=aufs_dp_mata_dsk

Cake Popped Off! (Cupcake Catering Mystery Book 2)

Author:  Kim Davis

Genre:   Mystery

Trade Paperback; Digital Book

ISBN #:  9780999068847

Cinnamon & Sugar Press

302 Pages

$9.99; $.99 Amazon

September 19, 2020

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Cupcake caterer Emory Martinez is hosting a Halloween bash alongside her octogenarian employer, Tillie.  With guests dressed in elaborate costumes, the band is rocking, the cocktails are flowing, and tempers are flaring when the hired Bavarian Barmaid tries to hook a rich, hapless husband.  Except one of her targets happens to be Emory's brother-in-law, which bodes ill for his pregnant wife.  When Emory tracks down the distraught barmaid, instead of finding the young woman in tears, she finds her dead.  Can she explain to the new detective on the scene why the Bavarian Barmaid was murdered in Emory's bathtub with Emory's Poison Apple Cake Pops stuffed into her mouth?

With an angry pregnant sister to contend with, she promises to clear her brother-in-law's name.  As Emory starts asking questions and tracking down the identity of the costumed guests, she finds reasons to suspect her brother-in-law has been hiding a guilty secret.  Her search leads her to a web of blackmail and betrayal amongst the posh setting of the local country club crowd.  Can Emory sift through the lies she's being told and find the killer?  She'll need to step up her investigation before another victim is sent to the great pumpkin patch in the sky.

✽✽✽✽✽✽✽✽

Emory Martinez is trying to recover from a nasty and harrowing divorce, where she was once accused of murder.  Now she lives in the poolhouse of octogenarian Tillie Skyler, as her cook and companion, also doing Tillie's son, David's, bookkeeping and correspondence.

Tillie is throwing a Halloween party for friends, and Emory's sister is catering it with Emory providing the desserts.  Everything seems to be going smoothly until the buxom barmaid starts harassing people - especially Emory's brother-in-law, Thomas.  But after an altercation, Emory finds the barmaid, Mandy, dead in her bathtub in the poolhouse.  Now Thomas is a suspect and her sister begs her to help find the killer.  As if that isn't bad enough, David comes homes with a new twenty-something wife, angering David's grown sons Theodore and Brian, and the new wife, Barbara, makes some changes that could endanger Emory's job and the sons.

But Emory soon finds that there's more to the story: Barbara could have some ties to the dead woman, and there are secrets and lies that abound everywhere.  When things escalate, Emory doesn't know whether to stop Tillie from investigating or help her.  Either way, it could get her killed anyway...

This is the second book in the series and I enjoyed it just as much as the first.  While I didn't really care for the fact that Emory constantly denigrated herself - she seems insecure about her looks but doesn't do anything about it - I ignored this to really dig into the story.

The murder is almost immediate and while we don't get to know Mandy at all beforehand, we learn an awful lot about her afterward when Tillie and Emory start questioning the people who knew her.  Tillie is a much better interrogator, since she doesn't come right out and ask people if they killed her; but the two make a decent pair together, with Emory watching out for the elderly woman.

There's also a new detective in town who wants to like Emory for personal reasons (not what you think) but doesn't know her and can't rule her out any more than anyone else.  They clash a little bit, but I do like the fact that Detective O'Neill isn't harsh with her and doesn't treat her badly.  I really detest the 'bad cop' in books where the detective is trying to put the protagonist in jail.

Having just getting to know David's sons, I do like Brian quite a bit and hope to see more of him while Theodore comes off as pretentious; still, it will be interesting to see how they progress in further books in this series.

When things escalate, and I won't say how, it changes the game for everyone, and Emory finds herself in the middle of a real pickle without knowing what direction to go in.  It gives the story a bit of intrigue to it, and makes you want to keep reading to find the outcome.  When we do discover the killer it comes as a complete surprise, and that was indeed worth reading.  Recommended.

https://www.amazon.com/Cake-Popped-Off-Cupcake-Catering/dp/0999068849/ref

Goodreads:  https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3615838774

More on Kim Davis's Books:  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B089MG9YTF?searchxofy=true&ref_=dbs_s_aps_series_rwt

Sprinkles of Suspicion (Cupcake Catering Mysteries, Book 1)

Author:  Kim Davis
Genre:   Mystery

Trade Paperback; Digital Book
ISBN #:  9780999068823
Cinnamon & Sugar Press
269 Pages
$8.99; $.99 Amazon
June 2, 2020

⭐⭐⭐

One glass of cheap California chardonnay cost Emory Gosser Martinez her husband, her job, and her best friend.  Unfortunately, that was only the beginning of her troubles.

Distraught after discovering the betrayal by her husband and best friend, Tori, cupcake caterer Emory Martinez allows her temper to flare.  Several people witness her very public altercation with her ex-friend.  To make matters worse, Tori exacts her revenge by posting a fake photo of Emory in a compromising situation, which goes viral on social media.  When Tori is found murdered, all signs point to Emory being the prime suspect.

With the police investigation focused on gathering evidence to convict her, Emory must prove her innocence while whipping up batches of cupcakes and buttercream.  Delving into the past of her murdered ex-friend, she finds other people had reasons to want Tori dead, including Emory's own husband.  Can she find the killer, or will the clues sprinkled around the investigation point the police back to her?

✽✽✽✽✽✽✽✽

Emory Martinez wakes up in her bathroom with a hangover, not even knowing how she got there, after a night out with her best friend Tori.  After finding a hickey on her neck, she's afraid her husband will see it, since he should have been home an hour ago, but his bed is empty.  Not able to reach Tori by phone, she bicycles (yes, bicycles) to her apartment, and finds her husband and Tori in a compromising position.  After pummeling Tori outside over this, the police arrive and she calls her sister for a ride home.

Her twin sister gives her a ride home and reminds her about a child's birthday party that day that she needs to make a cake for, completely unconcerned about Emory.  (More on this later).  Then her mother calls about her being humiliated by a photo on Facebook, and Tori looks and sees it's of her and an unknown man.  When she can't  log into her account to remove the photo, she goes back to Tori (!) for her help - and stumbles over her dead body.

Now the police think she's the main suspect for the murder, but don't have enough to arrest her for it.  So Emory tries to find the identity of the man that she was with the night before so that she can figure out why Tori would post that photo, and after finding Randall (do we know his last name?) she realizes that Tori set her up for a fall.  It doesn't help that her boss thinks she's trying to blackmail him and fires her, too.  So Emory has only one choice: find out who killed Tori so she can get off the hot seat and back to a hot stove...

This is the first in the series, and I thought it would be a nice cozy to pick up.  It's not a bad one, it just has a few problems:  Emory, the main character, is an accountant, so you'd think she'd have an analytical mind, but she's completely clueless.  She allowed her police officer husband to do their own finances, and now she's facing bankruptcy.  He's also a serial cheater, and she knew nothing through their seven married years, so this is the person we're looking at to solve a murder.

Now, I tried to give her a pass because her marriage falls apart, she loses her job (which I didn't understand why that happened, since it made no sense to do that to her), and then she's accused of murder.  It's a lot to take in, but Emory has trouble figuring it out.  I had to wonder how she can concentrate on recipes when she can't even concentrate on conversations with other people.  

Then, the day of the murder, her sister Carrie picks her up and is only concerned about herself and Emory making a cake for a kid's birthday party.  Her mother takes her cheating husband's side and wants them to get back together, thinking everything Emory does is wrong.  (We still don't know how her cake knife was gotten - it was never explained).

Unfortunately, while the writing was fine, the characters, for the most part, fell flat.  The only interesting character was Tillie, and we didn't get to spend any time with her.  While the book was uninteresting for the first two thirds, toward the end, beginning with her meeting Tillie, is when it picked up, so I'm glad I finished it if for that alone. 

The murder was basically solved when the killer admitted everything at the last minute, and Emory never did figure it out herself.  For an amateur sleuth, she has no clue -- which isn't surprising.  The murderer tells her the truth without provocation on their part.  I do like to see the protagonist put the pieces together, but in this case, there wasn't any pieces, and Emory did nothing.  So I couldn't give it a high rating just for that alone.  However, since it is the first book, I will probably read the next to see if the series improves, and also the characters.  There are also quite a few yummy-sounding recipes in the back that I might try myself, so that's a plus.

https://www.amazon.com/Sprinkles-Suspicion-Cupcake-Catering-Mystery-ebook/dp/B086XKRCJH/ref=sr_1_1?

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3400465896