(Image from Barnes & Noble)
When Angie Turner inherits her grandmother's farm in little River Vista, Idaho, she sees it as the perfect opportunity to start over. An executive chef, she decides to open a farm-to-table restaurant with the help of her best friend, Felicia Williams. With the County Seat scheduled to open in a few weeks, the two women are scrambling to hire staff, convince local farmers to sell them produce and dairy, and make sure the restaurant's opening runs smoothly.
Angie manages to persuade crotchety "Old Man" Moss to sell her his famous goat cheese, a real triumph. The next thing she knows, however, the man's body is found at the bottom of a treacherous cliff. Not only does Angie end up tending one of the deceased's lively goats, but she also can't help channeling her inner Nancy Drew to figure out the truth behind the elderly man's suspicious death. As she comes closer and closer to solving the case, Angie's life becomes more and more dangerous. Can she find the killer before the killer finds her?
As much as I love the title and setting of Who Moved My Goat Cheese?, the first installment in Lynn Cahoon's Farm-to-Fork mystery series, the story just didn't work very well for me. The characters are cliché and not well developed. Angie Turner, for example, is as generic as her name implies. Because neither she nor her love interest is round enough to feel real, their sparkless romance falls flat. The mystery at the book's center isn't very mysterious and the big finale just feels ... anticlimactic. While I appreciate this cozy for being light, fun, and clean, it didn't engage me enough to make me want to move on with the series. Oh well.
(Readalikes: Reminds me of the All-Day Breakfast Cafe series by Lena Gregory)
Grade:
If this were a movie, it would be rated:
for mild violence and mild sexual innuendo
To the FTC, with love: I bought a copy of Who Moved My Goat Cheese? from Amazon with a portion of the millions I make from my lucrative career as a book blogger. Ha ha.
I love Lynn Cahoon but this is my least favorite series and the first one was my least favorite. I think the Tourist Trap series and the Writer's Retreat series are both so much better.
ReplyDeleteReally? I'll have to give those two a try. This one just didn't work for me.
DeleteIt's books like this that have made me shy away from cozies. They're just never as good as I want them to be.
ReplyDeleteI used to not read cozies at all, but I've lightened up a little and have managed to find a few cozy series that I love. This is not one of them.
DeleteWhen even a punny title can't save you, it's all over. :-)
ReplyDeleteRight? Ha ha.
DeleteI do love Lynn Cahoon's books, but his series is certainly not up to the others I have read. Nice, honest review Susan. It is definitely a formula cozy mystery and that is not for everyone.
ReplyDeleteGood to know. I'll have to try her other series.
DeleteAwww, too bad! The cover and title are cute and the premise and setting sound fun. Bummer that the contents weren't as appealing!
ReplyDelete