Inherit the Word
Daryl Wood Gerber

Genre:
Mystery
Rating:

Jenna Hart moved back to Crystal Cove, California, to recapture her joie de vivre and to help her aunt Vera run the local culinary bookshop and café. But it’s hard to follow a simple recipe for relaxation when murder gets thrown in the mix…

The Cookbook Nook is set to host the town’s upcoming Grill Fest, a tasty tradition which pits local amateur chefs against one another to concoct the most delicious dishes. This year’s challenge: grilled cheese. But with competing chefs bearing grudges from past years, more mouths are running off than savoring the fare.

The expression “too many cooks” proves all too true when the eight-time champ is found murdered in the alley behind the café. Soon a local diner owner (and Jenna’s “second mother”) is suspected of bumping off the competition, and Jenna has to douse the flames before the wrong person gets burned…

Review

Jenna Hart helps her Aunt Vera run a culinary bookstore and café and loves her new life in Crystal Cove, California. The town is holding its annual Grill Fest, and “The Cookbook Nook” is hosting the competition. This is exciting news for Jenna and Vera who hope hosting the competition will increase sales. This year’s challenge is grilled cheese sandwiches. Once the competition begins, the chefs are planning and preparing their dishes, and Jenna and Vera are happily selling out of cookbooks containing grilled cheese recipes. The fun comes to an end when one of the cooks is found murdered behind the café and a competitor is the number one suspect. Jenna can’t believe her friend would ever murder anyone and starts her own investigation to find the real killer.

This series combines two great settings for a cozy mystery – a bookstore and a café. Each set the scene for interesting visitors, and the cooking competition in this installment adds even more fun. The premise of the series is based on cookbooks and titles of various cookbooks are worked into the storyline in an interesting way. There are also several recipes at the back of the book that really sound delicious.

I think the cooking contest and the various characters involved in the competition make this sequel even better than the first book. Some of the less likeable characters, such as bead shop owner Pepper Pritchett, don’t play as large of a role in the book and that also helps make Inherit the Word a better a book. In the first book, Jenna’s relationship with her father was strained and the reasons behind their problems didn’t make sense. I am glad to see that their interactions are less awkward in this book. I still don’t care for chief of police Cinnamon Pritchett. She seems cold and jumps to conclusions too quickly. At least she seems to pay less attention to her mother Pepper’s accusations when conducting her investigation than in the first book. If she can open up a little and accept Jenna’s attempts at friendship, Cinnamon could be a much warmer character.

In addition to the cooking competition and Jenna’s investigation into the murder, Jenna has a personal mystery to solve related to her deceased husband David. I find this part of the book to be even more interesting than the murder of the cooking competition! It really adds to the book without slowing down the pace main plot.

Anyone who enjoyed the first book in this series will love this sequel. Fans of Victoria Hamilton and Ellery Adams will also enjoy the book. In addition, Ms. Gerber writes the Cheese Shop Mysteries under the pen name of Avery Aames, so fans of that series will definitely like this book, especially since there is a lot of information given about cheese to tie in with the grilled cheese competition.

Reviewed by Christine