Charms and Chocolate Chips: A Magical Bakery Mystery by Bailey Cates

              Apparently, I was wrong when I wrote about the last book in the Magical Bakery Mystery series.  I thought things in Katie’s romantic life were only going in a certain direction and were still somewhat up in the air.  Then I started reading Charms and Chocolate Chips and I found out Katie’s romantic life is actually pretty settled.  At least it is for awhile.

                Katie Lightfoot seems to be hiding from something.  She spends all of her time either at the bakery or volunteering at a local conservation group, Georgia Wild.  This leaves her very little time to spend with her boyfriend, Declan, or deal with the revelation that she is a lightwitch, something neither she, nor anyone else, truly understands.

                It is through her volunteer work that Katie comes across her next dead body, and murder.  This time she’s not the one to find it, though.  That privilege falls to Wren, a coven member’s granddaughter.  She is the one to find Autumn Boles, the founder of Georgia Wild, dead, on her desk, holding an origami bat.  It’s strange that Autumn would be holding such an item in the first place, but what is even more strange is the extremely bad feeling Katie gets from it.  The bad feeling, mixed with having worked with Autumn, as well as her concern for Wren, leads Katie to set out and find the murderer.  Unfortunately, her determination to find the culprit put’s her life and her relationship with Declan in danger.

                I was glad to see the conflict between Declan and Katie’s magic handled rationally and without a lot of drama.  There were some worries on Katie’s part, of course, that things would not work out, but she never got hysterical over it.  Even after Declan experienced a magical incident and told Katie he needed some space to think, nothing became overly dramatic.  Instead, Katie prepared herself to let Declan go if need be, and moved on with what she needed to do with her life.  This type of behavior is not what always happens in books.  As someone who prefers the mystery over the relationship drama (although I don’t hesitate to comment on it), this calmness is very refreshing. 

                  Something that did bother me, though, was the behavior of everyone around Katie.  Steve, Katie’s other possible love interest, started coming around again, and all her friends and family acted weirdly.  When Steve was around, they would get anxious and cranky as though they expected Katie was going to run out on Declan with Steve.  It got to be too much, and, in my opinion, was a huge insult to Katie.  Never has she exhibited any type of behavior that she would skip out on someone she was committed to for another guy.  Intentionally hurting someone like that is not in Katie’s character.  That fact that those around her acted as though this may be a possibility was a shame and made me wonder if they truly know Katie at all.