Game of Cones, by Cynthia Baxter

Format: e-ARC, 304 pages

Publisher: Kensington Books

Published: 24 November 2020

ISBN: 9781496726827

Genre: Mystery & Thrillers

Back cover blurb: In Cynthia Baxter’s fourth Lickety Splits Mystery, ice cream shoppe owner and amateur sleuth Kate McKay doesn’t waffle around scooping up new clientele at a historic hotel, but her hopes of becoming the Hudson Valley’s reigning ice cream queen melt fast when murder checks-in!

From the moment Kate arrives at the imposing Mohawk Mountain Resort, not even luggage brimming with hot fudge can sweeten her stay. Instead of savoring alone time with her on-again boyfriend Jake and leading workshops on whipping together delectable frosty treats, she finds herself stranded at the isolated hotel with a small group of nutty characters–and a dead body.

When the corpse of wealthy cosmetics executive Bethany La Montaigne is suddenly found following a blackout, any of the five strangers trapped with Kate and Jake could be the killer. Chilled to the core, Kate vows to discover whether the victim’s mortal enemy was a smooth-talking playboy, bubbly millennial, mousy librarian, charming Englishman, or the Mohawk’s creepy general manager…

Bethany’s life was chock full of scandals and there’s little doubt that someone refused to endure another taste. With just a sprinkling of clues, it’s up to Kate to bring justice to a culprit who believes that revenge is a dish best served cold…

My review: I chose this book from Netgalley because of the punny title and the fact it was about ice cream. I was unaware it was the fourth book in a series, but I don’t think that mattered much. It soon became apparent, though, that this was very poorly written. The title and the ice cream were the best things about it.

The characters were unlikable stereotypes who didn’t seem to care that someone had been murdered in their midst and their body left somewhere in the hotel, never to be mentioned again. One even had a complete change of character, going from creepy to puppy dog in a matter of a few pages. The plot was ridiculously implausible. Police would have been on the spot, no matter what the weather, and it would not have been up to one of the guests to inform the family about the death. Mrs Moody’s backstory was extremely unlikely from a legal perspective. And what kind of ice cream business owner goes to a remote hotel without knowing if there are decent refrigeration facilities?

At once stage, Kate’s niece said Google was her friend, and it’s clearly the author’s friend also because she used it to provide unrelated facts about ice cream at the start of each chapter, even down to including the URL of the website the fact came from. There were pages describing what a cult was, like it was some novel concept, and even an explanation of foosball. One can only assume the author thinks she needs to spoon-feed her readers because they aren’t capable of looking up new words for themselves if they don’t know them. But would they really not have heard of them?

And then there was the actual writing. At one point, the word ‘suddenly’ was used three times in two short sentences. This could have benefited from a good editor, both for writing and content. Kate was written much older than she was meant to be, more Miss Marple than Nancy Drew.

Overall, then, not one I would recommend. Despite the ice cream, I won’t be reading the rest of the series or any other by Baxter.

***Disclaimer: This e-ARC was provided to me by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Huge thanks to them. ***

My rating: 1/5

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Ragdoll, by Daniel Cole

Format: e-ARC, 378 pages

Publisher: Hachette Australia

Published: 28 February, 2017

ISBN: 9781409168751

Genre: General Fiction (Adult), Mystery & Thrillers

Back cover blurb: A body is discovered with the dismembered parts of six victims stitched together like a puppet, nicknamed by the press as the ‘ragdoll’.
Assigned to the shocking case are Detective William ‘Wolf’ Fawkes, recently reinstated to the London Met, and his former partner Detective Emily Baxter.
The ‘Ragdoll Killer’ taunts the police by releasing a list of names to the media, and the dates on which he intends to murder them.
With six people to save, can Fawkes and Baxter catch a killer when the world is watching their every move?

My review: I was reminded a lot of the Luther TV series while reading this. Will Fawkes, aka Wolf, is the kind of detective who takes crimes personally, isn’t above bending the rules to get his man, and who often finds himself embroiled with his witnesses and colleagues. The case was gory and intriguing, full of sudden twists, and based on the blurb, I should have enjoyed this more than I did. But the fact was I didn’t get much sense of Wolf until very late in the story. I wasn’t invested in him, or even any of his colleagues. Only Edmunds seemed to stand out, and it doesn’t look like he will be staying on for the second book. I can see how Cole wrote this initially as a screenplay, but feel like the characterization would have been all down to the actors cast. I doubt I’ll be reading the sequel.

***Disclaimer: This e-ARC was provided to me by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Huge thanks to them. ***

My rating: 3.5/5

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The Restaurant Critic’s Wife, by Elizabeth LaBan

Format: e-ARC, 316 pages

Publisher: Lake Union Publishing

Published: January 5, 2016

ISBN: 9781477817766

Genre: Women’s Fiction, General Fiction (Adult)

Back cover blurb: Lila Soto has a master’s degree that’s gathering dust, a work-obsessed husband, two kids, and lots of questions about how exactly she ended up here.

In their new city of Philadelphia, Lila’s husband, Sam, takes his job as a restaurant critic a little too seriously. To protect his professional credibility, he’s determined to remain anonymous. Soon his preoccupation with anonymity takes over their lives as he tries to limit the family’s contact with anyone who might have ties to the foodie world. Meanwhile, Lila craves adult conversation and some relief from the constraints of her homemaker role. With her patience wearing thin, she begins to question everything: her decision to get pregnant again, her break from her career, her marriage—even if leaving her ex-boyfriend was the right thing to do. As Sam becomes more and more fixated on keeping his identity secret, Lila begins to wonder if her own identity has completely disappeared—and what it will take to get it back.

My review: This is a very hard book to rate. I enjoyed the writing style – and absolutely love the cover – but the characters were very unlikeable, especially the husband. Sam was just odious, dictating that his wife couldn’t have a life, couldn’t make friends without checking if they owned a restaurant first, couldn’t even leave the house when she was going stir-crazy at home with a toddler and newborn. Lila wasn’t much better, though, biting her tongue instead of speaking up, and making some pretty irresponsible choices regarding friends and her secret job. Hazel, the three-year-old, was very obnoxious – but dare I say realistic? – as well. I found I had to keep reading to see if the whole family imploded.

It worried me that Elizabeth LaBan’s real husband was like Sam, so was glad to read in the acknowledgements that he is not. I would pity her greatly if he was, but I suspect there is a ring of truth about some of what she wrote, given the consequences some restaurants suffer from a bad review.

***Disclaimer: This e-ARC was provided to me by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Huge thanks to them. ***

My rating: 3.5/5

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