Bread Over Troubled Water: A Cozy Mystery Review
Bread Over Troubled Water was such a delightful surprise of a cozy mystery. Winnie Archer’s books have great reviews and that is what inspired me to read this book. I love it when I’m aligned with what others are saying!
This is the eighth installment of the Bread Shop Mystery series and although I haven’t read any of the previous novels in the series, I was fully immersed in the Californian town of Santa Sofia and its charming characters. The main amateur sleuth, Ivy is a photographer and also works part-time at the Yeast of Eden bakery, where one of its customers is found murdered a day after visiting the establishment. The bakery, where the comings and goings of staff and customers all add up to some strategic red herrings and the list of characters do become a bit confusing between them all at some point. However, if I read the previous novels, I believe that wouldn’t have been an issue. What I will say is, I appreciate it when authors include a list of characters at the beginning of their cozy mystery book to help us keep track.
What I especially loved was all the family dynamics surrounding Ivy with the bakery owner's family and the lengths that Ivy was able to conclude who the killer was. The pacing of the story was just right and I was able to solve whodunit in the last quarter of the story.
I thoroughly enjoyed Bread Over Troubled Water and I’m looking forward to reading the previous novels as soon as I can.
Thank you Kensington Books for the arc. Thoughts expressed in this review are completely my own.
Book Description
Photographer Ivy Culpepper is soon to make a home with her husband-to-be in the California beach town of Santa Sofia—but the Yeast of Eden bakery remains her second home. It’s not just a place to work, but a community. And now one member of the community has been murdered . . .
A regular who used Yeast of Eden as a workspace, Josh Prentiss always turned heads with his startlingly good looks and thousand-watt smile. But Ivy can’t help noticing one morning that he seems distracted and off his game. Later, during a visit to the park where she and Miguel plan to hold their engagement party—with plenty of baked goods on the menu—her rescue pug, Agatha, sniffs out Josh lying in a bed of poppies…scone cold dead.
There’s no reason for Ivy to get involved. She’s busy enough holding down the fort as the shop’s owner, Olaya, cares for her recently orphaned niece, not to mention the stress when a new employee is fired and storms out in a rage. Then a band of rabble-rousers starts picketing the bakery, claiming that Olaya’s sourdough roll is what killed Josh—and Ivy hears some salacious gossip about her beloved boss. She doesn’t think there’s a grain of truth to the seedy rumors—but to prove it, she’ll have to start sleuthing . . .