Description (from cover):'The town of Jewel Bay, Montana--known as A Food Lover's Village--is obsessed with homegrown and homemade Montana fare. So when Erin Murphy takes over her family's century-old general store, she turns it into a boutique market filled with local delicacies. But Erin's freshly booming business might go rotten when a former employee turns up dead...
Murphy's Mercantile, known as the Merc, has been a staple in Jewel Bay for over a hundred years. To celebrate their recent makeover as a gourmet food market, Erin has organized a town festival, Festa di Pasta, featuring the culinary goods of Montana's finest--including her mother Fresca's delicious Italian specialties.
But Erin's sweet success is soured when the shop's former manager, Claudette, is found dead behind the Merc on the Festa's opening night. With rival chef James Angelo stirring up trouble, and rumors swirling that Fresca's sauce recipes were stolen from Claudette, Erin's mother is under close scrutiny. Now Erin will have to hun down some new suspects, or both her family and her store might wind up in hot water...'
My thoughts:
So the debut cozy mystery book in a new series curse continues. Once again I picked up a new cozy series that I think that I will enjoy, only to be disappointed in the first book of the series. Sigh. I was simply bored to tears with this one. It had the small town, murder, and a lot of suspects, but unfortunately, it wasn't enough to keep yours truly entertained. At times, I felt like I was just reading this one to be reading a book. Nothing grabbed my attention, nothing sucked me in to the storyline. Even the ending was a little disappointing. Of course, there was the dreaded love triangle thing going on for the main character and nothing annoys me more than the love triangle. That alone is enough to put me off a book, but for this one, there were other issues.
I just found this one to be mediocre at best. It wasn't poorly written, it just didn't have any oomph factor that really drew me in. This book is a short one coming in at only 270+ pages for the mystery part and yet it took me days to get through it. That is one sign that I really didn't care for it. Usually if a book is so good, I can't wait to read it and I seem to breeze right through it. Definitely not the case with this one. It just seems to me to be another series trying to live off the food mystery theme with the god awful love triangle. Is this becoming a new normal for the cozy mysteries? The love triangle? I swear it keeps popping up in cozies like no one's business. Note to authors: I HATE LOVE TRIANGLES!! I am sick of them. They do not make for good story lines. They are boring and annoying. Stop writing about love triangles. Ugh.
Really, I am sort of annoyed with this book at the moment (Can't you tell??) that I don't even really have anything good to say. I am still trying to figure out how this one won the Agatha award for debut mystery. Nothing spectacular here. Hate to be so bluntly honest, but I love the cozy mystery genre and I loathed this book. I'm leaving it at that.
Overall Rating: 1
Title: Death Al Dente
Author: Leslie Budewitz
Series: Food Lovers' Village Mystery #1
Publisher: Berkley
Publication Date: August 6, 2013
Pages: 304
Genre: Cozy Mystery
Get It: Amazon; Barnes & Noble
Disclaimer: This book was selected from the library by myself and I reviewed this book without compensation of any kind. All thoughts and opinions are solely mine.
