A CAFFEINATED CRUNCH by Constance Barker

Publisher: NA
Date published: August 1, 2015
ISBN: ASIN: B0139RRMRY
Cozy Mystery
E-book
Reviewed by Helen
Weblink: http://www.amazon.com/Caffeinated-Crunch-Cozy-Mystery-Sweet-ebook/dp/B0139RRMRY/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8
Obtained via Promo agency
Rating: 3



Sweet Home Mysteries book 2

In a town where most of the residents live in a seniors’ village, the police fundraiser at the seniors recreation center is a big event. Lily is thrilled when Eli invites her on a date to the event, and both her aunts get invitations as well. But the evening doesn’t go quite as expected.


I enjoy cozy mysteries but this book didn’t really resonate with me. Lily and her aunts are all interesting characters, but that wasn’t enough for me. Everything is told from Lily’s POV which might be why I couldn’t get a deep enough understanding of the other characters. Also some chapters had a very nineteenth century touch of the author adding as line at the end of them indicating something would happen. I suppose it is a hook, but it’s very contrived and olde worlde and I found it more of an annoyance than a hook.

Also in such an olde worlde seniors situation I found it strange that a handyman would be working on a non-urgent plumbing job on a Sunday, and that it would be just a regular day at the dentist’s, and so on. I couldn’t see an important plot reason why these things would happen and they seemed a little “off” to me. I also felt the murder got solved far too easily. I have no problem with what happened and who did it, but it all fell into place very easily.

There was a smattering of wrong/misused words (precarious instead of vicarious etc), inaccurate capitalization, backward facing apostrophes, and incorrect tenses.
All in all, it was an average read, and I won’t be bothering with the next one in the series. I just don’t really care enough about the characters.


This is an objective review and not an endorsement of this book.