Tastes Like Murder

Cookies & Chance Mysteries, Book 1

By: Catherine Bruns

Narrated by: Karen Rose Richter

Length: 8 hrs and 44 mins

Publisher's Summary

Sally Muccio's had her crosses to bear: a cheating ex-boyfriend, crazy Italian parents, and an unfaithful husband, just to name a few. After her divorce, she returns to her hometown to start a novelty cookie shop whose specialties include original fortune cookies, served with a sprinkle of foreshadowing.

But there's no warning when her ex-husband's mistress drops dead on Sal's porch, and police confirm it's a homicide. Determined to stop her life from becoming a recipe for disaster, Sal takes matters into her own hands.

With two very different men vying for her affection, dead bodies piling up, and a reputation hanging by an apron string, Sal finds herself in a race against time to save both her business and life - before the last cookie crumbles.

©2015 Catherine Bruns (P)2017 Catherine Bruns

Where's My Fortune Cookie?

Heroine Sally Mucci and her gal pal/sidekick can take on the world with their cookies, wisecracks and friendship, even when a corpse turns up in front of their store. Most of the characters have known each other since high school or even earlier and much of the action is driven by personality, family background, and relationships. This is a "cozy" mystery so fun and food are at the forefront and several recipes are included which I'd love to try. Narrator Karen Rose Richter had a great time creating the voices and various accents. Caution: There is a "Don't go in the haunted house!" moment when you'd like to thwack the character as you yell at her from the back of the theater.
Disclaimer: "I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review."

It was not the cookies!!!!

This is my first book by this author. I thought it was a great story line. Sal and her friend Josie run a bakery. A woman from her past that cheated with her ex husband comes to town and comes to the bakery and taunts her. On one of her visits, she get some cookies from Sal and leaves. However when Sal got ready to go out and opens her door she is dead outside the door. So of course she feels she needs to investigate herself for her business so she and her friend Josie have to find out how she died. It turns out it is bee venom, which of course, the victim Amanda is allergic too. But how did she ingest it. Sal is getting over a divorce and her old boyfriend comes back in her life and policeman,Bryan, who is working on the also has other interest in Sal. Both want to go out with her. Mike the old boyfriend wants them to rekindle their love. So now she has romance issues plus financial issues due to the murder outside her store. After asking people many questions, one being the deliveryman they use(sleazy guy) who was having an affair with Amanda, there is another murder. The delivery man. He too was poisoned. He had gotten some cookies from Sal. Someone put it in the cookies. Now there is two murders. Things start to get dangerous for Sally and Josie. Bryan tries to insist they quit snooping. Of course Sally does not. What will happen next? Who done It? And which guy will she choose? I received this book free in change for an honest review. I really enjoyed the story line and the characters were great. The narrator did a great job. The only thing i did not like was the guy she decided to be with. Just my opinion. I wanted her to pick the other guy. Other than that, i look forward to more in this series.

3 and a half

This is an OK but typical story. I figured out who did it early but continued to listen because I liked the characters and wanted to see how the story unfolded. My only other complaint about this story is the unnecessary love triangle that seems to be part of every cozy mystery.

Murder and cookies

Loved this book. The characters were fun and the storyline moved right along. And cookie recipes too.

Excellent book, awesome author, could not put it down

This was my first experience with this author and cozy mystery. I am hooked. This was a great book. It was a page turner. I couldn't put it down. Catherine Bruns knows how to hold a reader's attention.

who killed the evil one

I truely enjoyed this mystery , it started off with trouble & drama then led to murder. I was tickled by sal family especially her parents, the grandma is a riot. her best friend Josie is a true character supporter. looking forward to reading more on this series.

Life could get worse

Tastes like Murder is the first book in a Cookies & Chance Mystery series by Catherine Bruns. Sally Muccio owns the Sally’s Samples Bakery. A rich not so nice lady that was a factor in her divorce shows up to taunt her. That woman, Amanda, is later found dead outside of Sal’s shop.

Sal and her BFF Josie investigate.

I really enjoyed the story line and the characters were great. The narrator did a great job.

Great fun!

I love this story! It was funny and entertaining. I will definitely read the rest of the series!

A bit disappointed.

I had trouble with the narrator's voice. It was too breathy and sweet, which made the story difficult to follow at times.

Tastes like Murder Tastes like Fun!

In Tastes like Murder by Catherine Bruns, Sally Muccio owns the Sally’s Samples Bakery, where she has to deal with some frustrating clients. Then one day Sally’s personal longtime enemy walks into the shop. The exceedingly rich Amanda tormented Sally throughout high school, and Sally was happy to get away from the bully when she married and moved to Florida. At least, Sally escaped Amanda until the day she walked in on Amanda in bed with her husband. And now he is Sally’s ex-husband, and she lives once again in her hometown near her crazy family and owns a bakery with Josie, her best friend. With anxiety over Amanda’s visit to the bakery, Sally goes to a bar with her friends and ends up drunk after only three beers. Running into Mike, the love of her high school years, Sally lets her intoxication influence her to make out with him until she vomits on his shoes. The day after that proves especially miserable, and then it gets worse when Amanda walks in to the bakery for the second day in a row. When Amanda seems inclined to linger past closing time, Sally makes her leave. But only a few minutes later Sally goes to leave her building only to find the body of Amanda lying on her stoop.

As rumors spread fast and wide within their New York community that Sally killed Amanda, the bakery keeps busy with customers but no actual business. The resulting loss of income really upsets Sally and Josie, influencing them to decide to investigate for themselves. In the meantime, Sally finds herself the source of attention of Brian Jenkins, the new detective on her case. But what about Mike? Which of her two suitors does she focus on? And who is trying to frame her for murder?

I enjoyed this book, with its mixture of mystery and romance. I enjoyed the characters of Sally’s crazy family, including her father, who is obsessed with his impending (or so he wants to believe) death; her mother, who seems to think she is a teenager again; and her grandmother, who is the sensible one around. I did find myself reading the romance narrative through the lens of my own experience, interpreting the pros and cons between Mike and Brian differently than the other characters interpret their actions.

The audiobook is narrated by Karen Rose Richter. For the most part, I enjoyed her performance. But I found her voicing of Josie to be a little inconsistent at times, sometimes not sounding as clearly like her usual voice of Josie, with the New York accent occasionally coming more strongly than at most times. The voice of Kate, the mother of Amanda, also doesn’t sound the same to me throughout the book. The voices of the men occasionally have the same issue, but in general they work pretty well.

I had a good time listening to Tastes like Murder. The book is often guided in its plot with fortune cookies that are popular in Sally’s bakery. I like the way they help to create an outline for the plot without doing so very obviously. Just as most fortune cookies that we get in Chinese American restaurants contain fairly obscure messages that can be interpreted many ways, the messages in this book do the same so that the plot does not become immediately obvious. The characters are fun, as is the plot. My only concern is that I’d like to have seen a bit more depth and detail to the book, but otherwise, it was great. I give it four stars.

Disclaimer: I received this book as a gift from the author, but that had no effect on the content in my review.

Cosy mystery.

This was an entertaining, light-weight listen, for lovers of cosy mysteries. I enjoyed the narration by Karen Rose Richter, who managed managed male and female voices equally well.

Sally Muccio (Sal) has returned to her home town to open up a cookie shop with her best friend Josie Sullivan. She has left behind a loser of a husband and is ready to make a new start. Unfortunately her ex-husband's lover is set on making problems for Sal, ultimately falling dead on her doorstep. Sal feels compelled to find out why Amanda died, before her business collapses under suspicion that her cookies were responsible.

There are some real quirky characters in here. Sal's family are nuts; her mother thinks she's still a teenager and dresses appropriately, and her father is obsessed by death, funerals and coffins. An elderly neighbour is constantly rude, for no apparent reason. Thank goodness for the wise old grandmother who holds them all together.
To add interest, two sexy men are chasing Sal, an ex boyfriend, and a dashing policeman, who will she go out to dinner with?

A fun listen, got the ironing done with a smile on my face :)

Winnie the Pooh could drink you under the table.

An enjoyable plot made irritating by one of the (unintentionally) silliest heroines this reader has encountered. So accident prone, the question has to be posed - does she suffer from some disability as yet unrecognised? - the lead protagonist Sally who, with her school (and best) friend Josie, has opened a cookie shop in her home town, is recently divorced. Ten years before she had broken with her one true love boyfriend because she caught him drunk in the arms of another girl. On the rebound, she was swept away by Colin, marrying him five years later only then to discover what an unfaithful hound he was. Dah!
When Sally's nemesis is found dead on the porch of her shop, Sally and Josie go into investigative action to find the culprit despite being warned by the delectable policeman to stay out of it and 'leave it to the police.' Do they need the warnings? Of course not, blundering through interviews and nosing about as the fortunes in the fortune cookies become ever more foolish.

So, a mystery and a romance, of a sort (at least there is a load of angst spilt by Sally). For this reader, the main mystery was what on earth any of the men in her town saw in her? But, hey, I'm only a woman.

Yes, I am being harsh. It was a fun listen made much better by the narrator, Karen Rose Richter, whose pleasant vocal ntonation carried the story well with good voicing changes for the individual protagonists. And my thanks go to the rights holder who gifted me a complimentary copy of the book, via Audiobook Boom.. Not my cup of tea, perhaps, but I am sure that readers with a fondness for romance mixed into their less than stringent murder mysteries might love it.