Book Review: Chocolate Dipped Death

Author: Sammi Carter
Title: Chocolate Dipped Death
Publisher: Berkley
Publish Date: March 7, 2006
Buy: Amazon

Book Blurb: When poisoned bon-bons end the life of a town trouble-maker, candy shop owner Abby Shaw finds herself trapped in an extremely sticky situation.

Review:  This is the 2nd book in the Candy Store Mysteries series. It is a fabulous cozy mystery. It has everything you've come to expect from this kind of book; a spunky heroine, a boyfriend in some area of law enforcement, an absolutely adorable pet, a shop of some sort and a dead body. (You mustn't forget the dead body!!)

What I loved about Abby is that she has a little of what readers love about Stephanie Plum, but she's not quite the Hot Mess, that Steph is. She has problems in her life; her family, trying to run a candy shop etc, dead bodies, but things don't blow up around her...well at least cars don't.

The mystery involves the murder of the town bad girl/trouble maker who has returned for a candy making contest at Abby's shop, Divinity. To say Savannah is disliked is an understatement, so when Abby finds her dead, there are a lot of suspects. Savannah was pretty much a nasty thing to everyone in Paradise, Colorado, when she was in high school. Oh and these people know how to hold grudges too! That makes it harder to figure out "whodunit."

I found Sammi's writing to be really great and I breezed through this book and now I'm longing to find the rest of the series, because I really enjoyed the characters and want to get to know them better. I also want to see how Abby's relationship with Jawarski develops over the next few books.

There were a few things that didn't quite sit right with me at the end...uh, you can't reach the PD? I'm sure there's a thing called 911 in Colorado, even in a small town. There were a few other things too, but nothing detracted me from the story.

Definitely a good afternoon read!

Rating: 5 flowers