Playing with Bonbon Fire by Dorothy St. James

I belong to a cozy mystery group that offers lots of giveaways to read ARCS each month. It is called the Cozy Mystery Review Crew, if you'd like to join and start receiving free review books as well. I was selected to review "Playing With Bonbon Fire" by Dorothy St. James and picked it up in between my Agatha Christie Readathon books this week. I adore cozy mysteries, have a sweet spot for chocolate, and am growing more interested in living in the southern part of the US. Good combo, eh? It took me three hours to read a hard copy of this ~335 page novel, the second in the Southern Chocolate Shop Mystery series. It is told in 1st person point-of-view with the perspective focused solely on the main character, Charity Penn (see more on her later). It has a typical cozy feel with easy flow from chapter to chapter, dialog, and descriptions. I usually read books in order, but this had a rush due date to deliver a review, so I couldn't go back to the first one. I think it's important to read this series in order, as there are details about the character in the first book that would have been helpful, but still, it was a quick and fun read. Charity Penn, known simply as Penn because she dislikes her first name, inherited the chocolate shop from her maternal grandmother. She was abandoned my her mother at birth, delivered to her rich but seemingly difficult or abrasive father and his family. She grew up feeling alone and isolated, but is starting to develop a better relationship with her half-sister, Tina. Penn hasn't quite adapted to cooking and running the bonbon shop, but she has support from her late grandmother's friends and wants to make the woman proud. In this caper, Tina sends ex-boyfriend, Bixby, to help sing with his band at the town's festival, as it will help cement Penn in a more admired role. The town hasn't quite warmed up to her yet, and her grandmother's other children don't believe she's really one of them or should have inherited the shop. All she wants is to find her mother who disappeared years ago. Bixby suddenly fights with another band at the festival over rights to a song, and then the current song owner winds up dead. Penn's mother's history is tied up in this mystery and it all comes to a head in a big scene at the end of the book. She now knows who her mother is! It's a good example of a typical cozy mystery with a few standout moments, including the connections and mysteries surrounding Penn's family (both her mother's and her father's sides), the bonds she has with a few of her late grandmother's friends helping to transition the store, and the romances she could potentially have with some of the men in the town. I like Penn's personality and style and she seems to have a fair balance of when to push and when to back away in terms of investigating any crimes. I like that there's only one or two recipes so we don't lose too much page space to non-story items. I also enjoyed the descriptions of how she works in the bakery preparing food and securing the chocolate beans from a remote South American jungle. The mystery was medium-complex with a few red herrings and several paths to trace before landing at the true culprit. It kept me guessing most of the way through and even had me traveling down a wrong path. One of the issues I had was not knowing a few people's ages, so I could never be sure if they were a candidate to be Penn's mother and/or date someone else. Of course people can date someone a generation older or younger, but it's not that common in a cozy mystery so I was trying to line it all up. That said, when the details came out, it was believable, but a tad rushed. We stumble upon the criminal and learn some secrets, yet we don't quite get all the details surrounding the why/how from ~35 years ago when a song was created... but it mostly all fits together. I think it just needed a bit more detail and explanation, but that could be coming in the next book in the series. I'm open-minded! I'd give the book 3.5 stars and would recommend it as a solid read. I see a lot of potential in the series with the family drama and the chocolate shop, but the ending came a bit too quickly, so there is some room for growth. All in all, I'm glad I read this one and will definitely read more in the series and from this author.