Muffin But The Truth by Ellie Alexander

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with a review copy in exchange for my honest opinion.

Publication Date: December 27, 2022

Publisher: St. Martin’s Paperbacks

Pages: 320

Genre: Cozy Mystery

Rating: 3/5

Muffin But The Truth is the 16th installment in Ellie Alexander’s Bakeshop Mystery series and my first entry into the series. Juliet runs my now favorite fictional bakeshop/restaurant, Torte, and she has been hired to cater an out of town companies executive retreat. The executives are a hot mess and have a lot of drama within their group that all culminates in one of the being murdered.

I enjoy our protagonist Juliet and her team at Torte. Another big part of the story is Juliet’s personal life with her husband and her teenage step son who has just moved in to spend a year with them. And Alexander did a great job of blending Juliet’s personal life with the drama of the executives.

I did think there was a lot of repetition and exposition which really dragged down the middle to the end of the story. I also thought the mystery element of the story was weak. Or that could have been a result of me not liking any of the executives so I didn’t really care who did it. I did find the reason for the killing surprising and I loved the drama of the reveal at the end.

I liked this one enough to want to read more of the series (spoiler, I liked the next one even more than this one). Which makes me excited to dive into Alexander’s extensive backlist. And this book was worth the read just for all the delicious and incredible sounding food and coffee. I’ve never read a book that describes coffee in the way this one did and as a coffee lover I was salivating and desperately wishing I could have a cup of every coffee described.