planner problems

It’s fall at Torte bake shop, and the bakers and baristas are in full swing. Juliet Montague Capshaw is turning her pregnancy cravings into delicious pastries while her team creates innovative coffee drinks and full the baker shelves with all sorts of treats. But Jules is distracted. Not only is she eagerly waiting on her twins arrival, but her best friend Lance Rousseau is getting married, and he wants her help to plan it.

Lance decided to fire his first choice of wedding planner, Maci Stephens. She was young and starting out in the business, but she stood him up for three meetings in a row, and he was done. So he agreed to meet with Tippy Bartlett about letting her plan the wedding. As the Artistic Director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Lance loves a spectacle and wants his wedding to be magnificent.

But during his first meeting with Tippy, Maci shows up and begs him to reconsider. She claims that someone had been sabotaging her and that’s why she’d missed their meetings, and went so far as to accuse Tippy and her assistant Carson of being behind it. Lance decides to stick with Tippy anyway, but that doesn’t last long, as Jules goes on a local delivery of goodies for a holiday party and finds Tippy in the frozen creek as she walks along the bridge. A call to her stepfather, a local detective, brings the authorities, who bring up Tippy’s body and find her planner in the water.

Lance can’t stop himself from investigating Tippy’s death, but Jules is drawn into the mystery too. They talk to the local vendors that Tippy had been working with as well as a recent client. They find out that Tippy had cash flow issues, and that she had lied to at least one vendor about when she signed Lance as a client. Jules and Lance start to think that Maci might have been on to something when she said that Tippy had been sabotaging her, but they also have to consider her as a potential killer.

Meanwhile, the gang at Torte are planning a baby shower for Jules and her husband Carlos, and Jules is eating her way through Ashland as the investigation heats up. But as she and Lance get closer to figuring out who it was who ended Tippy’s life, they get closer to danger themselves. Will they be able to solve the mystery and unmask a killer and keep themselves safe?

The Pumpkin Vice Cafe is the twenty-third book in Ellie Alexander’s popular Bakeshop Mystery series. Fans of Jules and her team at Torte will be excited for the fall flavors throughout the story and in the recipes at the end. It’s exciting that the twins are so close to making their appearance, but I will admit I struggled with that part of the book.

With Jules being so pregnant and eating for three, she ate more than usual. And Alexander’s descriptions of not only all the amazing sounding pastries and dishes at Torte but also the taco place and the pizza place and all the snacks made me hungry through this entire book. But I did love this story. Seeing Lance and Arlo being excited about their wedding and coming up with ideas was so much fun, and I thought the plot was well structured. This book is perfect for cozy reading. Just stock up with snacks and maybe a hearty soup or sandwich to help with the hunger pangs.

Egalleys for The Pumpkin Vice Cafe were provided by Minotaur Books through NetGalley, with many thanks, but the opinions are mine.