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they are a little short as a read for me- i can finish one in an evening but i just love the series highly recommend.
I hope I haven't bought any other of these author's mysteries. Still haven't finished the book and skimmed most of it for it didn't hold my interest. Boy, was this a hard mystery to finish. Too many loose ends and more than one mystery which didn't tie into the primary mystery.
The set up to the mystery is a good one (I love the title). Skye Denison isn't a cook but that doesn't stop her mother from entering her into Grandma Sal's Soup-to-Nuts Cooking Challenge. Things go from bad to worse when one of the contestants is murdered and Skye's uncle injured. Swanson leaves some plot lines open, no doubt setting up the next book in the series, which I found slightly annoying.While "Murder of a Chocolate Covered Cherry" isn't a perfect mystery, I loved visiting Scumble River and hope to visit there again.
that conveniently help move the plot along. While the writing is generally fine, there are a few times in the book when you know exactly what is going to happen next, especially at the end when Skye realizes who the killer is. Skye manages to overhear at least six conversations (including one over a loudspeaker). But while Swanson does an excellent job of interweaving the cooking contest and missing girl plot lines, I did have some problems with the overall plotting of the book.
Even though this is the tenth book in the series, I never felt lost - I felt immediately drawn into the world of Scumble River. There is a very cute subplot in which Skye's house seems to be trying to keep Skye and Wally apart. Skye struggles to make something edible to enter in the contest, but she has too many distractions including a missing student from the school where she is a psychologist and someone trying to sabotage the contest. and there are plenty of suspects.
While the cooking contest plot device is a common one, author Denise Swanson breathes new life into it with the behind the scenes glimpses of what goes into such an event. Now Skye must not only try and cook a decent meal, she must try to find the missing student and catch a killer before he or she strikes again."Murder of a Chocolate Covered Cherry" was my first visit to Scumble River and I found it to be a mixed bag. The characters are well done and I felt like I knew Skye and her family and friends and I love the nod to Trixie Belden fans with Skye's friend Trixie Frayne.
There is no reason to read this installment as it adds nothing at all to the series but a shuddering memory of wasted time. The plot is scrambled and boring, the characters are weak, and Mother May is just plain horrific. I have read all of the Scumble River Mysteries, and while I haven't enjoyed every one of them, this is the first one I've loathed. I actually read it as fast as I could just to get through it.
In my mind, a good series consists of entries that can stand on their own merits, without inexplicable references to characters and plots passed. It's a good thing Denise Swanson writes mysteries and not cook books. The prize winning "recipe" features--I am not kidding: canned cream of celery soup, canned cream of chicken soup, Velveeta and uncooked macaroni, baked together with cooked chicken and other mouth-watering ingredients. If it's to move the plot forward, it does so at the cost of moving relations between the sexes backward.behind every great man there's the not-so-little woman.I have read all of Swanson's books, and will likely read her next one too, but I do so not for the plot, not for recipes, but for the insight into a world that, truly, I find mystifying.
Who knows.but here is fiction at its most fictive.Skye dates the dreamy police chief.possessed of good looks, a body that is ripped, a sensitive soul, and a steel-trap mind. So, why, one wonders, must Skye routinely give Capt'n Wally suggestions for conducting his investigations. Perhaps the coastal natives spend more time in bathing suits. This must be why the midwest is different from the coasts.such pairings simply do not happen near the Atlantic and Pacific.
(Aptly enough, a big dinner scene takes place at the "Brown-Bag Banquet Hall": presumably wise diners pack their own in case "Chicken Supreme" is on the menu). The quality of the writing--not the product placement of earlier books--is what should sell the series.Then there is the character of Skye herself, apparently a plus-sized cutie who manages to attract all good-looking single men within her not-so-insignificant gravitational pull. The culinary gems in this volume--Death of a Chocolate-Covered Cherry--are guaranteed to send foodies running for the nearest cleansing diet. Not so here.
But most infuriating are the multiple references to other books in the series. Perhaps all the preservatives will protect you from the sodium content.It's not just the food that's hash in this mystery. The plot and the characters are a little confused as well.there are more sub-plots here than inches around Skye's waist.
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