Death of a Chocolate Cheater by Penny Pike

I love my mystery with a side of sweets! Seriously, even murder mysteries are better with chocolate. If you are ready to dive into a delicious mystery, I recommend you taste Death of a Chocolate Cheater, the second in the Food Festival mysteries by Penny Pike.

From the back of the book:

Food truck vendor Darcy Burnett unwraps a murder at the San Francisco Chocolate Festival in this mystery from the author of Death of a Crabby Cook…

At this year’s chocolate festival, Darcy and her Aunt Abby hope to win the $10,000 prize in the chocolate contest with Aunt Abby’s taste sensation: the chocolate raspberry whoopee pie. A little friendly competition from Darcy’s sometime-beau Jake Miller, who plans to enter with his chocolate cream puff delight, only sweetens the deal. But things get sticky when one of the judges, Polly Montgomery, is taken out of commission—permanently.

The suspects include every contestant with reason to believe Polly wasn’t too sweet on their sweets, including Aunt Abby’s high school friend. Now Darcy must pick through an assortment of secrets to catch a killer before someone else gets a bittersweet finish.

My Thoughts:

This was a fun mystery with lots of unexpected suspects who all had a good motive. I loved pondering the reasons and was surprised in a good way by the reveal. The setting was my kind of festival, I mean seriously who wouldn't love a chocolate festival? 

Even though this was the second part, it was my first time reading a Food Festival Mystery and I was instantly at home with these characters. Aunt Abby was too sweet and I even found Dillon charming in spite of his quirks. Bonus, in the back of the book you will find delicious chocolate recipes as well as a snippet of the next part in the series, which I am really looking forward to. 

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Disclosure: I may receive products in exchange for an honest review. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I personally believe will be good for my readers.