Book: Banana Cream Pie Murder

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Banana Cream Pie Murder (A Hannah Swensen Mystery Book 21)
Joanne Fluke
Amazon.com Product Link

New York Times Bestseller: After a glorious honeymoon, baker Hannah Swensen must deal with a ghastly homicide…

A romantic seven-day cruise is the perfect start to bakery owner Hannah Swensen’s marriage. However, with a murder mystery heating up back in Minnesota, it seems the newlywed’s homecoming won’t be as sweet as anticipated.

Hannah’s eager to settle down in Lake Eden and turn domestic daydreams into reality. But then her mother’s neighbor is discovered murdered in the condo downstairs. Victoria Bascomb, once a renowned stage actress, was active in the theater community during her brief appearance in town, and made throngs of enemies along the way. Did a random intruder murder the woman as police claim, or was a deadlier scheme at play? As Hannah peels through countless suspects and some new troubles of her own, solving this crime—and living to tell about it—might prove trickier than mixing up the ultimate banana cream pie . . .

Features over a dozen cookie and dessert recipes from The Cookie Jar!

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Alright, first off, I don’t know when and from where I got this book. Might have been when Amazon had a $0.00 deal on it and I downloaded it. I didn’t know it was a series.

As I read the beginning of the book, it became obvious that it was part of a series. It ended with a major cliffhanger as well, so there’s more to it. (Next note is, after searching for the full title, okay... this is book #21)

The book (and I would assume the series) seem to weave in food and recipes into the story. So you get a recipe for a dish that the characters are having in the previous chapter. Interesting.

The story though? A bit of meh. I figured the whole thing out around 70% into the book. The main character, Hannah, felt really dumb. Not knowing how to view missed calls? Even in Nokia era, the screen would tell you in big letters, you have a missed call. And later in the story Hannah says she has a Samsung, so she had a smartphone! What will there be on a smartphone? There will be a red number on the icon that tells you, you have a missed call, or 3 missed calls! Alright, you say there are people who are technologically challenged, but somewhere in the book she admits that “she can’t live without her MacBook” (or some other laptop brand) so......????

Internal thinking and decision thinking what-ifs and what-abouts, although I know it’s normal in everyday life, seem to be over-emphasized in this book. (Where she was wondering if she should go shower or wait for the mailman and then whether she should clean the fridge or wait for the mailman, or if she should bake cookies or wait for the mailman... if you are so worried, then, just wait for the mailman......)

There’s a few other incidents with such dumbness that I really had to question Hannah’s decision to investigating murders. And with this cliffhanger, I’d like to know what happens, but I don’t want to go through that thought process. Reading some of the reviews, I seem to get the impression that she isn’t so dumb in the earlier books, so I might give the first books a look into, if I happen to come by them.