Two Parts Sugar, One Part Murder

This is the epitome of a cozy mystery. There are quirky characters, a reluctant protagonist, and a dog.

I read cozies for the same reason I write them. I want an engaging story, an intricate plot, and no blood or gore on the page. Valerie Burns achieves this and adds an extra helping of laugh-out-loud humor.

I believe that dogs play a very important role in our lives. Maddie, the protagonist, enters into her ownership of Baby, a Great Dane, with reluctance, but by the end of the book, they will be inseparable.

My one warning to the reader, you… show more.

Social media expert Maddy Montgomery, left standing at the altar, is #StartingOver in small-town Michigan after inheriting her great-aunt’s bakery and a 200-pound English Mastiff named Baby. Her plan to sell the bakery and go back to her sophisticated life is spoiled by a restriction in the will requiring her to spend a year in New Bison. Maddy doesn’t bake, and her Louboutins aren’t made for walking giant dogs, but the locals are friendly, and Lake Michigan is beautiful. Maddy feels ready to take on the challenge—until New Bison’s mayor is fatally stabbed, and her fingerprints are on the knife.… show more.

Valerie Burns has quickly become a staple in the cozy mystery world having penned three successful series in less than five years. She’s recently created a fourth with the Baker Street Mysteries, which focuses on former social media influencer, Maddy Montgomery. In Two Parts Sugar, One Part Murder, we find Maddy humiliated after she gets dumped during a live stream of her wedding. Fortunately, fate intervenes with an inheritance, which stipulates that she must operate her family’s bakery for a year before she’s entitled to any money. Due to her circumstances, Maddy accepts the challenge only to become the… show more.

How can a book featuring a social media expert who was stood up at her wedding, but then inherits her great-aunt’s bakery and Baby, a two-hundred-pound Mastiff, not be engaging especially when she’s more in tune to her Louboutins than baking? The protagonist, Maddy, is engaging, the fashion and dialogue rich, Baby pound by pound lovable, and the whodunit fun to solve. The first book of a fun new series, Two Parts Sugar, One Part Murder provided me with a few hours of great escape from the real world.