Tried to read this, couldn't get farther than 50 pages. Full of metaphor, simile and the characters I met and scenario were unappealing. It's been a rough year personally, so you may find a different story if you read it. Don't take my word for it.

A good cozy mystery. I would like to read more in the series.

It was easy to figure out what the intruder was looking for when Eugenia didn't. ( )

A short trip to Rhode Island to visit family becomes an extended visit for rancher Genia Potter. Her late husband's friend, Stanley Parker, convinces her to stay and help him compile a Rhode Island cookbook. Each recipe included in the cookbook must contain a secret ingredient. Genia is to host a dinner party at her rented home, with a guest list provided by Stanley. Each guest will supply a recipe for the cookbook. One by one the guests arrive, but Stanley never does. Finally, word arrives that Stanley's body has been discovered.

The mystery part of this cozy doesn't break any new ground. Although Pickard does a decent job of casting suspicion on several characters, I managed to correctly identify the murderer and the motive. The fun for me was the setting, and the descriptions of uniquely Rhode Island foods. I was interested enough in the food culture of Rhode Island (a state I've never visited) to add a Rhode Island cookbook to my wish list.

I also enjoyed Pickard's writing style. I enjoy cozies, but I don't often find them quote-worthy. This one is. Here are a couple of my favorite passages:

Over time...Jason had come to know the plants in the spacious greenhouse and the garden as individuals with distinct needs, appearances, and even personalities. And he reacted to them like that. Not that he would ever in a million years admit this, but he liked to spend time with the pansies, for instance, who were sophisticated and elegant, and he didn't like the petunias, who were brassy and thought entirely too much of themselves.

This passage expresses the way I feel about the cookbooks I inherited from my grandmother:

No antique cookbook worth hundreds of dollars could possibly have meant as much to her as this one. Genia couldn't count the number of times she had sat across from Stanley in the past few months, watching him scribble in this book, listening to his strong opinions about food and people and life. And it wasn't merely a cookbook, she saw as she opened it, it was also a diary of the recipes he served and to whom he served them. She found odd bits of paper stuck in it—a postcard here, a grocery receipt there, all wedged between pages...Stanley's bold, penciled notations were everywhere. They were scribbled in margins, in between recipes, written on divider pages, and in the index...He commented on ingredients, added his own inventions, listed who came for lunch.

My grandmother's cookbooks look just like this! One of the pleasures of having them is reading the notes in the margins and on scraps of paper about the occasions when my grandmother used the recipes.

Warmly recommended. ( )

Eugenia Potter has come from Arizona to Devon, Rhode Island to help with her great niece and great nephew. When her old friend Stanley Parker turns up murdered, there are plenty of suspects. Eugenia has been helping Stanley write a cookbook. When he dies, his niece gives Eugenia Stanley's beat-up cookbook where she discovers that Stanley has recorded the dates and guests of recent meals he has hosted or planned to host. Will Eugenia be able to unravel the motive and murderer before her great nephew is arrested? The book was just "okay." This is the sixth in a series of books begun by Virginia Rich and continued by Nancy Pickard after Virginia's death. I wasn't very impressed with the manner in which Eugenia went about trying to resolve the incident. I will, however, admit to having been distracted by other things that required more attention while I was reading it. This is the only book in this series which I have read. I do question the decision to continue this series with an author who did not create the original character and wonder if that also attributed to my somewhat lackluster impression with the book. ( )

This is a fun weekend read. The mystery was intriguing and I was really pulled into Genia's family. The twists and turns seemed unpredictable, but made sense when pulled together. I especially liked the blending with recipes and food. I'm a foodie so it's always nice to read about a character who is too. This was my first book to read with this character, and now I'm going to try to find and read the rest of the books in this series. ( )