Into the Sweet Hereafter
The Blurb
Tally Holt is thrilled to see her new replicas of vintage candy displayed in the window of Bella’s Baskets, a gift basket shop owned by her friend, Yolanda Bella. There’s just one problem; the creations appear to be melting. The ladies assume the culprit is the broiling heat of the Texas sun, until that night, the store window is smashed, and there’s only one thing missing: the replicas.
Tally is positively stumped. Clearly, the useless fake candies are more special than she bargained for, but why? When a rash of seemingly unrelated burglaries sweeps through the area, Tally is determined to sleuth out the answer and stop a thief from killing more than the town’s appetite.
The Details
Series: Vintage Sweets Mysteries – Book #3
Author: Kaye George
Genre/Category: Cozy – Amature Sleuth/Culinary
Publisher: Lyrical Underground
ISBN: 1516105451
Page Count: 178
Rating: 
The Review
Into the Sweet Hereafter is the third book in the “Vintage Sweets Mysteries” series. Tally, a candy maker, and Yolanda, a gift basket creator have another mystery on their hands, and before long, a body. When someone breaks into a window display and steals plastic replicas of Tally’s candy, it makes no sense until they discover that the plastic candy held valuable Jade hidden inside.
Like most people, I enjoy a cozy where there is yummy food, especially candy, a great love interest, and a well-written who-dun-it with plenty of suspects and red herrings. But it takes more than these things to make a good book. It also takes characters that readers enjoy reading about, little to no confusion about what the main characters are doing, and a mystery that has the elements needed to keep people guessing, the who, what, where, how, and why. This book, and the series in general, hit on these needed aspects sometimes, but they miss more often than not on some of the more important details. In this instance, there’s a little of both, hits on some, misses on others.
There are times throughout this book that readers may not know what is going on or who and what the characters are talking about. Tally makes vintage candy, and Yolanda creates gift baskets for all occasions in their individual shops, but a few times, I couldn’t tell the difference. Neither girl’s shop played a big enough role. There is too much repetition throughout the story as they go back and forth between the two main characters describing and speculating, as well as retelling the same information separately. There is not enough investigating, with characters and suspects that are sort of in the background and yet not a part of the overall intrigue, and there is no secret about who the culprit is; this is plain from the very beginning. Although, this book was better than the first one, <em>Into the Sweet Hereafter</em> leaves a lot to be desired.
However, if readers can get past the redundancies, the unnecessary doublespeak, the lack of any real mystery, and the characters who jump to conclusions faster than a speeding bullet, they may find that they enjoy this short read. The baskets Yolanda design always sound beautiful, Tally’s candy is described deliciously with recipes in the back, and a few of the characters such as Lisa, Molly, and Mrs. Greg are worth the time spent reading this book.
The Author
Kaye has been a janitor in a tractor factory, a mental health center secretary, a bookkeeper, and a short-order cook. She’s been a mainframe computer programmer and a nurse’s aide along the way.
Kaye is also a violinist, an online mystery reviewer, an award-winning short story writer, and the author of four different mystery series with three different publishers and one self-published. She has accrued three Agatha Award nominations and one finalist position for the Silver Falchion, as well as national best-seller status with her Fat Cat series written as Janet Cantrell. She has had over 30 short stories published. Kaye is a member of Sisters in Crime as well as the Guppies chapter.
Readers will want to read the “Vintage Sweets Mysteries” series from Kaye George from the beginning starting with book one Revenge Is Sweet.
Represented by: Blue Ridge Literary Agency LLC.
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