Pink Lemonade Cake Murder

Hannah Swensen Mysteries, Book 26

By: Joanne Fluke

Narrated by: Suzanne Toren

Length: 7 hrs and 51 mins

Publisher's summary

In this irresistible mystery from New York Times and USA Today best-selling author Joanne Fluke, Hannah Swensen is at the center of a lively summer fest with fun for everyone in Lake Eden, Minnesota—including a cold-blooded murderer....

The Tri-County Summer Solstice Celebration has come to town, and even among local artisans, athletes, and marching bands, Hannah attracts fans of her own while serving lip-smacking pink lemonade desserts. But the mood sours when a body turns up, leading revelers to wonder if the festivities mark both the longest day of the year and the deadliest....

A retired professional MLB player has met a terrifying end—and, considering the rumors swirling about his past, the list of suspects could fill a small stadium. Among them could soon be Delores, Hannah’s mother, who publicly held a grudge against the victim after he infamously dunked her in the tank at a previous county fair....

Now, with her mother’s innocence on the line, a life-changing announcement at The Cookie Jar, and a plethora of desserts to bake, Hannah can’t afford to strike out as she begins a dangerous investigation into the ruthless killer who’s truly in a league of their own....

Features Over a Dozen Cookie and Dessert Recipes from The Cookie Jar!

Joanne Fluke is the New York Times best-selling author of the Hannah Swensen mysteries, which include Caramel Pecan Roll Murder, Triple Chocolate Cheesecake Murder, Coconut Layer Cake Murder, and the book that started it all, Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder. That first installment in the series premiered as Murder, She Baked: A Chocolate Chip Cookie Mystery on the Hallmark Movies & Mysteries Channel. She is also the recipient of Mystery Writers of America’s Grand Master Award. Like Hannah Swensen, Joanne Fluke was born and raised in a small town in rural Minnesota, but now lives in Southern California. Please visit her online at www.JoanneFluke.com.

©2023 Joanne Fluke (P)2023 Recorded Books

dear god, done with this series

so many superfluous words, characters sound like half wits, they didn't used to be this bad did they?

A cookbook with a little story weaved in

I generally love these books, but this one felt like a cookbook with a tiny story sprinkled in. Kind of disappointed.

Please finish the series

Way too many recipes in this book. I was fast forwarding through most of the chapters to skip the recipes. The writing wasn’t great, pretty ordinary, inconsequential and not of any meaning or significance. Barely any plot development. Yes, we all want to know what happens with the love triangle of Hannah, Norman and Mike. Please put us out of misery in the next book and close it off, unless you can give us something more intriguing and worth the money to read.

not one of the best Hannah series novels

This started slow. it seems like the author just tries to throw in a bunch of recipes rather than a true storyline. it doesn't improve until close to the end when it sets up for the next book.

Stopped part way through

Nothing here but ongoing fluff about what cookies to take where, looking through peepholes, etc. absurd number of detailed recipes. No story, no deduction. People would say they wanted to talk and dropped suspects and motives in her lap, but still story never advanced - just more and more recipes and ads for various food companies. Impossible to follow story, but then there really was not any story.

Just write a cookbook and call it a day.

Convince me this wasn’t written by AI

I’ve read every book in this series and have enjoyed them all. This one was a disappointment.

Pink Lemonade Cake Murder feels like a ChatGPT generated book, regurgitating dialogue, recipes, characters, etc., from every other book in the series. There was so much filler that I kept forgetting the clues sparsely peppered through the book.

Some things just don’t make sense to me… Why was there an entire dissertation on some stew recipe and different types of bratwurst? How many times does someone need to recommend that people drink alcohol to relax or eat chocolate when stressed? How does Hannah make any profit from her bakery when she is giving away cookies and muffins to everyone in town?

It also feels like Lake Eden is about 50 years in the past. High school girls named Dorothy, Susie, and Donna? Young women wearing skimpy clothes causing that level of family drama? Cool whip and condensed soup recipes? And on the soup note, did it add value to the story for Hannah to describe which cans of condensed soup could be combined to create another type of condensed soup?

One more thing with the recipes - for the audio book, I’d suggest you move them all to the end of the book. When I’m reading the paper book, it’s easy to flip past the recipe and get back to the story. It’s so irritating to stop what I’m doing to fast forward past the recipes.

It’s also getting hard to suspend reality with Hannah investigating murder in collaboration with the police department. It is unbelievable after all the murder in this little town that Bill, Lonnie, and Rick still feel so insecure in their investigative abilities that they have the cookie lady and the dentist helping with interrogations.

And finally, performance. The way she voiced Lisa and Andrea was like nails on a chalk board. They all sounded whiney. And Delores’s “interrogation” was painful to listen to.

All that being said, I’ll probably still read the next one that comes out in hopes this was a one-off. However, I’ll wait to get it from the library and won’t purchase it.

Old fan

Recipes should be at end. They are a distraction. Not much of a story here:

Super disappointed.

I couldn’t get through this one. It is the first in the series that I just didn’t like. The narrator was terrible. I couldn’t pay attention and stopped listening about a third of the way through.

What happened?

Like others, I have read or listened to all the books in the series. This was beyond disappointing. The plot was as weak as water. The dialogue was filled with more filler than a botoxed beauty queen. Someone spent too much time researching baseball. Hopefully, the next one will get back on track.

Not her best work

Weak plot. I enjoy the recipes, but there are way too many in this one. Twist at the end is interesting.