Lori C. (dollycas) reviewed on 7/10/2016 + 707 more book reviews

Dollycas's Thoughts

Jennifer "J.J." Tanner works for her friend, Skye Drake, at Make It Happen, a party planning business. After the first caterer for a birthday party for the daughter of a high-tech millionaire backs out J.J. gets chef Antonio Marcotti to cater the affair. Things go well until he makes an unauthorized addition to the menu that could cost Make It Happen a lot of money. She confronts him about it and the matter is still not settled when she heads home. When she returns to the home the next day to clean up, there are police everywhere. She learns the esteemed chef never made it home. He is dead, murdered...and the police think J.J. killed him.

J.J. is a fine protagonist, independent, persistent, and gutsy. A girl after my own heart, buying cookbooks more for the beautiful pictures than for the recipes. Hoping to change that she joins the Culinary Capers Dinner Club. A group of people who have now become her friends. Each month they choose a cookbook and create a dinner with recipes from the book. They also are great helpers in her quest to find the real killer of Antonio Marcotti.

All the characters we meet fun and engaging, well except for the victim he was quite a "Divo", the male version of a diva. J.J. is quite a sleuth, I enjoyed the way she talked her theories through, even with her police officer friend, Allison. Allison walks a fine line of "helping" J.J. while not releasing any confidential information. Private Investigator Ty Devine starts out tailing J.J. but soon they end up sharing information and almost working together. This relationship is just starting but it has a lot of potential.

There are two mysteries in this book, the murder of Antonio Marcotti and the investigation into who is stealing J.J.'s party ideas. She was working on a party plan with a client only to find out another party planner proposed the exact same idea, almost word for word. Skye was a little more helpful with the second investigation. She wasn't too involved in the first, which was surprising to me. She did stay on top of things at Make It Happen so J.J. could leave to follow up on clues.

I enjoyed the introduction of the Culinary Capers Dinner Club. What a fantastic idea! I love that real cookbooks are used by the characters. This time J.J. chose Nigellissima: Easy Italian-Inspired Recipes by Nigella Lawson. I just took a peek at the pages Amazon previews from this book and can see why it drew J.J. s attention. Of course there are recipes in the back of the book too!

Linda Wiken is off to a fabulous start for this series! I want to get to know these characters better. I want to see what the author dreams up for them next. I hope this becomes a long running series because this first tasty treat was absolutely delicious.

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