There is a new development of sorts right near Lucy Stone's home. Five modular homes have been built and problems played right from the outset. Whether it was a new teen and his ultra-large motorcycle, or the teen's mom Mimi Stanton's chronic complaining, well, either situation is certain to drive Lucy crazy.

But, she has bigger fish to fry at the moment. School will be starting soon, and Lucy and her friends decide to set up a bake sale for The Hat and Mitten Fund. The proceeds will go towards purchasing complete school supplies for the town's young students. As a mother of four, Lucy knows that sometimes the long list of supplies can be overwhelming, so she is glad to spearhead the bake sale.

Right in the midst of this newfound chaos, shockingly Mimi, the complaining neighbor, is found dead, with a knife sticking out of her back, Quite naturally, the police are on task in trying to discover who the murderer is. Meanwhile, Lucy adept in her job as a reporter, starts coverage in her paper, the Pennysaver. More than that, Lucy cannot help but to follow leads of her own. As an amateur detective, Lucy does what she does best. She snoops, asks questions, and gets herself into some pretty sticky predicaments.

Bake Sale Murder is the thirteenth book in the Lucy Stone series and it is a quick, delightful read. Whether read in or out of order, or as a standalone, each book has its own story. As usual, there is always a surprise as to who the killer is, especially when there is one murder.

I look forward to the next entry in this series,St. Patrick's Day Murder, as each month I am striving to read at least one book in this ongoing series by Leslie Meier.

There is a new development of sorts right near Lucy Stone's home. Five modular homes have been built and problems played right from the outset. Whether it was a new teen and his ultra-large motorcycle, or the teen's mom Mimi Stanton's chronic complaining, well, either situation is certain to drive Lucy crazy.

But, she has bigger fish to fry at the moment. School will be starting soon, and Lucy and her friends decide to set up a bake sale for The Hat and Mitten Fund. The proceeds will go towards purchasing complete school supplies for the town's young students. As a mother of four, Lucy knows that sometimes the long list of supplies can be overwhelming, so she is glad to spearhead the bake sale.

Right in the midst of this newfound chaos, shockingly Mimi, the complaining neighbor, is found dead, with a knife sticking out of her back, Quite naturally, the police are on task in trying to discover who the murderer is. Meanwhile, Lucy adept in her job as a reporter, starts coverage in her paper, the Pennysaver. More than that, Lucy cannot help but to follow leads of her own. As an amateur detective, Lucy does what she does best. She snoops, asks questions, and gets herself into some pretty sticky predicaments.

Bake Sale Murder is the thirteenth book in the Lucy Stone series and it is a quick, delightful read. Whether read in or out of order, or as a standalone, each book has its own story. As usual, there is always a surprise as to who the killer is, especially when there is one murder.

I look forward to the next entry in this series,St. Patrick's Day Murder, as each month I am striving to read at least one book in this ongoing series by Leslie Meier.

I'm making the peppermint brownies from this book right now. Crossing my fingers that they taste good!

 

The recipe:

 

 

Brownies:

 

1 ½ sticks unsalted butter

8 oz bittersweet or semisweet chocolate

3 large eggs

1 ½ cups sugar

¾ cups all-purpose flour

½ tsp peppermint extract

¼ tsp salt

 

Frosting:

 

2 cups sifted powdered sugar

½ stick unsalted butter at room temperature

2 Tbsp whole milk

¾ tsp peppermint extract

 

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

2. Grease a 9 by 13 inch glass baking pan.

3. Melt the butter and chocolate. I did it in a saucepan on the stove, to avoid the possibility of the whole thing exploding on me in the microwave.

4. Using an electric mixer on medium speed, beat the eggs and sugar in a large bowl for about 5 minutes.

5. Add the chocolate and butter mixture, flour, salt, vanilla, and peppermint extract to the egg and sugar mixture and stir until just blended.

6. Pour the batter into the glass pan and smooth it out with a spatula. Bake for 25 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out with moist crumbs attached. Cool completely before frosting.

7. For the frosting, the recipe says to combine the powdered sugar, butter, milk, and peppermint extract and beat in a bowl with an electric mixer until creamy. Next time, I plan to beat the butter a bit first, because I ended up with a good deal of powdered sugar on my shirt during the first few seconds of turning my electric mixer on.

8. Spread frosting over brownies.

(spoiler show)

 

This is a low conflict story about friendship and baking. Eggplant is planning to visit his aunt in Turkey this spring and invites his friend Cupcake to come with him. Cupcake is very excited about the trip, because it will give him a chance to meet Turkish Delight, a famous pastry chef and his idol. First, though, he has to save up enough money to buy his ticket. While Eggplant is watching out for Cupcake's bakery, Cupcake sells some of his baked goods at various new places and events.

I've wanted to read this ever since I cataloged it for my library. The thought of a baked good creating and selling other baked goods was a little weird, but the artwork was bright, cute, and appealing.

Now that I've read it, I can say that the whole “baked good selling baked goods” thing is still weird. On the one hand, they ate food, like any other living thing, and owned pets (regular dogs, cats, etc.). On the other hand, Cupcake, at least, had actual cupcake-specific problems. When he and Eggplant went to a Turkish bath, for example, the sauna dried out his frosting a little, and the eucalyptus-scented Turkish Room made his wrapper start to peel.

If you can get past the weirdness of this world in which anthropomorphized food eats regular food, this is an okay story, although it ended too suddenly for my tastes and felt somewhat pointless. Like I said at the beginning of this review, Bake Sale is very low conflict. The worst things the characters deal with are Eggplant getting laid off and Cupcake's disappointment and slight depression, and both of these things are handled in a fairly low key way.

I think this graphic novel would be most appealing to those who are interested in baking. Thankfully, I fall into that category. There was something calming about watching Cupcake get ready to open his bakery each day. I especially enjoyed seeing him try new recipes. He wasn't afraid to experiment, even though the results weren't always successful.

It's practically required that food-related books include recipes, and Bake Sale is no exception. Varon included recipes for sugared flowers, raspberry squares, brownies, vanilla cupcakes with vanilla frosting, marzipan, dog treats, and peppermint brownies. I haven't tried any of them yet, but I'm planning on giving the peppermint brownies a shot once I've bought some peppermint extract.

Story-wise, this was a bit too low key for me. However, I'd still recommend it to baking enthusiasts, even (especially?) newbies.

 

(Original review, with read-alikes, posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)

This one is somehow tougher than the other book. It doesn't feel like some chick-lit murder mystery. Not when you off-handedly throw in a fourteen-year-old boy's suicide attempt.

 

What makes me angry is that the whole neighborhood just gossips about everyone else. And when Lucy's (the main character) daughter comes in, she asks what happened and Lucy just flat out tells her, "Tommy tried to kill himself. He tried to hang himself." I sure hope any parent with half a brain wouldn't go telling kids, FRIENDS, something like that. It's deplorable. That girl is going to tell her friends. And the whole school will end up knowing that this little kid was hopeless enough after his mom was murdered that he wanted to end his life.

 

And what does Lucy, our grand heroine, do? She assumes he tried to kill himself because he must have killed his mother. No, it's not like it's not surprising that there are teenage boys who get bullied, picked on by their dad, hazed by their teammates, have their mom brutally killed (then told by a random stranger) and they somehow think the world is hopeless. Lucy is an imbecile. She honestly has no idea what she's doing when it comes to being tactful. And she's probably going to write about it in the newspaper, as if that's exactly what would help the situation.

 

I can't stand it. I just can't stand the insensitivity.