Meet Your Baker: A Bakeshop Mystery by Ellie Alexander

               I am always happy when I find a new mystery series to read.  This time I found one in a Little Free Library I happened to walk past.  Of course, the book in this particular library was the third in the series, so I couldn’t just get started.  I had to wait until the first book came in from my usual library.  Not that this was a problem.  I’m able to hold onto the third book for as long as I want, so no matter how long it takes me to read the first two, I’ll be able to keep this third one on hand.  Because that is one of the great things about the Little Free Libraries.  There aren’t any due dates.              

               Pastry Chef Juliet “Jules” Capshaw has returned to her hometown in Oregon.  Leaving behind a job on a cruise ship and a husband, Jules is feeling lost and unsettled in her life.  The only thing that makes any sense at all is baking.  She wakes up every morning and walks to her mother’s bakery, Torte, to work.  It is a pattern that she is comfortable with, and one that gets thrown completely off balance when, after being home for only a few days, Jules finds a body in the bakery. 

                Nancy Hudson is a hated board member of the local Shakespeare theatre.  The one encounter Jules had with her, and what she hears from others, makes it no surprise that someone would dislike Nancy enough to kill.  Someone actually doing it, and in Torte of all places, is another story.  Naturally, Jules is curious as to why this murder happened and why it occurred in her mother’s bakery, but she does not intend on investigating.  There are far too many other things on her mind, including a somewhat strained relationship with her mother, to get involved in a murder.  Then Jules’s ex-boyfriend and current police deputy asks her to keep her ears open for any possible bits of information she may come across.  Little do either of them know, that what appears to be a small request, could lead to the end of Jules’s life.         

                To be honest, I was not sure about this book when I first started it.  I think it was because Jules was so distant.  Not only from the other characters, but the reader as well.  She had so many secrets that took a long time to come out, and I’m sure there are more that have not yet been revealed.  I’m not saying I have to know everything about a character right off the bat, but it felt as though as a reader I was intruding in some way.  Jules’s instant negative reactions and judgements to practically every person she met was a little unsettling as well.  Even towards her mother, who Jules professed her love for, it felt like there was a coldness.  Fortunately, this lessened as the book went on and Jules saw there was good in the people she was initially so hard on.  Not all of them, of course.  Some of the characters Jules took a dislike to really are bad eggs, and I hope they don’t last too long in the series.

                 With a warmer, more considerate Jules, I now look forward to the rest of the books in the series as I really enjoyed the mystery in this one.  When it comes to the characters, there are some personal relationships I hope go in certain directions, but that still remains to be seen.  With the potential for a long series, who knows what could happen down the line?  After all, even good relationships can get off track when there is murder around.