Professional football players Keogh Graham and Tyler Matthews want to open a Fairy Tale Cupcakes franchise. They’re spending the off-season in Scottsdale working in Mel’s bakery, learning about the business and how to bake show-stopping cupcakes. The popular athletes bring a boom of customers to the store as football fans flock to see the friends mixing batter and piping icing.
Everyone’s excited the athletes are pursuing their dream of owning a bakery—except for those who fear the players will ditch football for fondant and retire early from professional sports. The angry naysayers include their team owner and Keogh’s sports agent, along with some very vocal fans.
Release Date: Jun 4, 2024
Series:Â Cupcake Bakery
Book:Â 16
Publisher:Â Penguin Group
Imprint:Â BerkleyÂ
Price: $9.99
Melanie DeLaura and her two best friends, Angie and Tate Harper, are partners in the Fairy Tale Bakery and have recently begun selling franchises. They are really excited when two members of the local NFL football team buy a franchise and plan to open a bakery close to the stadium. Keogh Graham and Tyler Matthews see this as a good investment and a fun business to be in. The team owner is unhappy, though, because he wants all of his players to focus only on football, and has a very public argument with Keogh. When the outspoken owner is killed, Keogh becomes the prime suspect. Melanie refuses to let her new friend and business partner take the blame for a crime he didn’t commit and launches an investigation of her own.
I have read most of the sixteen books in the Cupcake Bakery series. Fans of the series will want to read the book to catch up on Melanie and her husband Joe’s personal lives, but this book also works fine as a standalone. In this case, that is both a good and a bad thing. It’s good in that the author does a good job of providing important background information about the main characters for new readers. However, with the exception of Melanie, the other main characters take a backseat in this book to new characters. Tate, Angie, and Joe are all great main characters, and the rapport between Tate, Angie, and Melanie is part of what makes many of the earlier books in this series so good. There is a great moment between Angie and Melanie in the book, but Tate’s role is unfortunately minimal. Keogh and his mom are likable, but it’s a shame they have more important scenes than the regular characters we have grown to love.
The bakery scenes in the book are fun and, as usual, the cupcakes sound delicious! For home bakers, there are a few different cupcake recipes at the end of the book. The mystery itself is interesting, and the team owner is such an unpleasant person that there are plenty of suspects in his murder. The crime scene is creepy and unique, but I don’t want to spoil it by giving more details. I kept changing my mind about who the killer was because clues pointed in a few different directions, and I fell for some red herrings. I know some people will laugh out loud at the scene in which the killer is foiled. I’m not a fan of slapstick humor in books, so it fell flat for me. The overall ending of the book is good and I hope future books will concentrate on the four core main characters.
~ Christine
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