Description (from cover):'New York Times bestselling author Laura Childs presents the best way to start your day--with a hearty breakfast and a side of hard-boiled murder.
Suzanne, Toni and Petra found a second life after losing their husbands--opening their own successful business, the Cackleberry Club cafe. But the three women never expected sleuthing to be the special of the day...
A killer has the town walking on eggshells.
When a snowmobile crashes into the woods behind the Cackleberry Club cafe, Suzanne finds her town's most hated banker beheaded by a wire staked in the snow. Now some of her best customers are prime suspects with a bushel of motives, and the murder investigation is snowballing. An elusive young runaway may be the Cackleberry Club's only way to crack the case...provided Suzanne can keep her head long enough to track down the cold-blooded killer.'
My thoughts:
This is the fourth installment in the Cackleberry Club mystery series. I fell in love with the characters and the small town of Kindred right from the beginning in Eggs in Purgatory and continued to love the series throughout the next two installments, Eggs Benedict Arnold and Bedeviled Eggs. This addition to be honest is not too much different than its predecessors and should please lovers of this series.
I love Suzanne's character. She is an inquisitive soul and one can help but love her. Toni is a character all by herself and makes me laugh out loud a lot with the silly things she says and does sometimes. The only thing that I don't really care for about Toni is that her love life is the same in every single story. Make up your mind already mo, pick one and move on. I'm getting tired of that aspect being played out over and over in all the stories. I know that it helps define Toni's character, but four books of the same is getting old quick. I still love Toni though.
For some reason, Petra's character in this one drives me up a wall. There's something about her that makes her not connect so well with the reader (for me at least). I can't really pinpoint my finger onto what exactly makes me feel this way, but Petra annoyed me in this book. Just the things she does and the way she acts puts me off a little. She would have to be my least favorite character and quite frankly if Laura Childs wants to keep her as a character she needs to involve her more and make her story a little more critical to the overall plot. She, as a character, I feel is getting lost in the story with Suzanne and Toni being such likeable characters. Definitely going to need some improvement on Petra in order to make the series interesting to me.
The mystery aspect in this is just what I expected with Laura Childs. You never know who the culprit is until the very end and it could have been a number of different suspects. I love that. I enjoy a good puzzle and so far Childs has yet to disappoint me in that aspect. This is a mystery that could be read by itself without reading the previous in the series. I don't think it would really hurt to read this one first, if you are new to the series. If you want back story and the character development though, highly recommend you start with book one and continue in that manner. A good read, just not the best of the series. I was a little disappointed in where the characters are going, but a good cozy mystery perfect for a cold winter day.
Overall Rating: 3.5
Title: Stake & Eggs
Author: Laura Childs
Series: Cackleberry Club Mystery #4
Publisher: Berkley
Publication Date: November 6, 2012
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.
