Cozy Mystery Review: Baking Spirits Bright | Sarah Fox | True Confections Mystery #2

One of the most charming winter-y settings I’ve read, Sarah Fox’s Baking Spirits Bright is the perfect winter mystery! A chocolatier finds herself on the case to solve a mystery when a fellow contestant in a holiday baking competition is murdered with her chocolate chipper!

About the Book | Baking Spirits Bright

Setting

The events of Baking Spirits Bright take place in December just before Christmastime in the small town of Larch Haven, Vermont. Larch Haven is known as the Venice of the United States because it has canals and gondolas in place of roads and vehicles. Residents and visitors may use golf carts or snow mobiles to get around town depending on the time of year, and during winter may skate on the frozen canals.

Characters

Becca Ransom is an actress-turned-chocolatier who left her career in Hollywood to move home to Larch Haven, Vermont and help run her family’s chocolate shop, True Confections. Angela (Angie) is Becca’s cousin and runs the business side of True Confections. Milo is a teenage cousin of Becca and Angie. Lolly is their grandmother who is now retired from running the chocolate shop.

Gareth is Becca’s brother, and he owns the Gondolier—one of the most popular restaurants in town—with his husband Blake. Roman Kafka is the pastry chef at the Gondolier, and a contestant in the Baking Spirits Bright competition.

Dizzy Bautista is Becca’s best friend and a local librarian. Sawyer Maguire is a police officer and a childhood friend of Becca’s. Detective Ishimoto is the officer working the murder investigation. Ollie Nyberg is another officer working the case. Ginny Ellis is a reporter for the local paper.

Irma Jones owns a bakery in town and is a contestant in the competition. Juniper Jones is Irma’s daughter and an aspiring artist. Eleanor Tiedemann works in Irma’s bakery as Irma’s assistant. Cameron is Eleanor’s teenage son. Stephanie Kang owns a cake shop called Love at First Bite and is a contestant in the competition. Donna works for Stephanie at her cake shop.

Amber Dubois is a food blogger and social media influencer who is competing in the competition. Paisley Hooper is Amber’s personal assistant. Daniel Hathaway is in town covering the competition from the magazine, Bake It Right.

Jaspreet Joshi is the organizer for the Baking Spirits Bright competition. Victor Barnabas owns the local art gallery and is a judge in the baking competition. Natalia Mehta is the head chef at the Larch Haven hotel and the second judge. Consuelo Diaz is the owner of a local café and the third judge.

Delphi Snodgrass and Luella Plank are friends and locals who live in Larch Haven. They are known around town as the Gossip Grannies because they love to spread rumors and gossip. Lois March is a friend of Lolly’s and lives in one of the apartments above Stephanie’s bakery.

Plot

In a cute new culinary cozy from USA Today bestselling author Sarah Fox, budding chocolatier Becca Ransom must solve a murder before she meets a sticky end.

Winter has arrived in Larch Haven, Vermont, bringing with it holiday cheer, lots of snow, and freezing temperatures. Becca Ransom is squeezing in time to skate on the frozen canals and drink hot chocolate by a roaring fire while also whipping up new creations for her family’s chocolate shop and experimenting with holiday flavors like eggnog, gingerbread, and peppermint. At the same time, Becca is preparing for the Baking Spirits Bright holiday baking competition, a popular annual event. She’s planning to enter an edible model of Larch Haven, with a mountain backdrop made of cake, gingerbread cottages, and chocolate gondolas on sugar-glass canals.

Professional bakers and a local food blogger are also participating in the event and they aren’t about to go down without a fight. The competition quickly heats to a boiling point, with flaring tempers and mysterious happenings. When one of the entrants is found dead, stabbed with Becca’s chocolate chipper, Becca tries to salvage the season by finding the killer. But the heat is on, and Becca is in danger of getting burned. (Synopsis from Goodreads)

Review | Baking Spirits Bright

I am so happy I discovered this cozy mystery by Sarah Fox! I expected it to be a standard holiday-baking-competition-cozy-mystery, but it wasn’t that at all. This is a well-crafted, winter mystery that kicks off in the final round of a baking competition but isn’t necessarily related to the competition (though it could be). This mystery isn’t overly Christmas-y. In fact, I would describe this as more of a winter-theme than Christmas, taking place in December in the adorable town of Larch Haven, Vermont.

This is the second book in the True Confections Mystery Series, but it was easy to jump into without reading the first. Becca Ransom is a strong, caring, intelligent leading character. This is her first holiday season since she moved back to her hometown in Vermont. The town of Larch Haven is a charming setting. The town has canals and gondolas (in the summer) in place of roads. Now that it is winter, many of the residents get around town by ice skating, snow mobiles, snow shoes, skiing, or rented golf carts.

Becca and her cousin Angie co-own the True Confections chocolate shop, with Becca providing the creative side and Angie running the business. Angie encourages Becca to enter the Baking Spirits Bright competition because it is covered by a well-known magazine and would be great for their business. Becca is thrilled to make it to the final round, where she gets to flex her creative side making a chocolate model of Larch Haven. However, the finals are delayed when talented-but-disliked baker and contestant Irma is found dead.

Though the murder weapon is one of Becca’s tools, she’s quickly cleared as a suspect. This was a nice surprise, since cozies tend to have the protagonist as the leading suspect. The rest of the mystery unfolds with Becca and her best friend Dizzy sleuthing, with some help from their childhood friend and current police officer, Sawyer.

Though Irma was murdered at Town Hall where the baking competition was hosted, I thought it was clever that the murder wasn’t necessarily linked to the competition (at least not fully). The other finalists are suspects, but Irma had plenty of people who may have a motive to kill her. The mystery kept me engaged through out. Fox crafted it so the mystery was both who committed the murder and why were needed in order to solve it.

The mystery had some great twists that took it into new directions. I loved getting to know the different townspeople while also keeping the book focused exclusively on the mystery. The side plots all tie into the central mystery and I never felt the book strayed too far. This was necessary since the mystery was highly complex and had a lot of layers to it.

There were a few scenes that got my heart rate up, including a winter-y chase that terrified me and thrilled me in equal measure. The reveal at the end was surprising but also made sense, and I thought back to scenes and clues that I had overlooked starting way back at the beginning of the book and throughout.

I loved the narrator for the audiobook. She brought Becca and the mystery to life. I actually just grabbed the first book in the series on audiobook as well because I enjoyed it so much!

This mystery kept me guessing until the final page. The mystery is the best part but the setting and characters make this a must-read series. I loved everything about this winter-y cozy mystery!

Thank you to Berkley Publishing and Penguin Random House for my copy. Opinions are my own.

About the Author | Sarah Fox

Sarah Fox, writer of cozy mysteries, was born and raised in Vancouver, British Columbia, where she developed a love for mysteries at a young age. When not writing novels or working as a legal writer she is often reading her way through a stack of books or spending time outdoors with her English Springer Spaniel.

Sarah has four mystery series, including the Music Lover’s Mysteries, the Pancake House Mysteries, the Literary Pub Mysteries, and the True Confections Mysteries.