Carly Hale is a thirty two year old woman who has recently moved back to her home town of Balsam Dell, Vermont, to fulfill her dream of opening a grilled cheese restaurant. Carly used the insurance money she received after the tragic death of her husband in an accident to furnish and fit-out the cafe. Carly, of course, is the sleuth in Linda Reilly’s Up to No Gouda, the first book in the Grilled Cheese Mystery Series, which is the next book I’m featuring in my posts discussing the most recommended and popular Cozy Mystery series.  

Up to No Gouda, begins, appropriately enough, with Carly ladling out tomato soup to be served with her “Party Havarti” grilled cheese sandwich. Carly’s restaurant has only been open a few months, but sitting near the Balsam Dell town center with its tourist attracting shops and foot traffic from the locals, it has become quite the sensation in the town that has earned the reputation as one of New England’s coziest villages. Carly was not only fortunate in her choice of locations — she also has hired two of the best employees a small cafe could want. Both Suzanne, her server and all around helper, and Grant, her young cook, are excellent at their jobs.

Unfortunately, Carly only rents the space for her cafe. The lease is soon expiring, and the new owner of the property has no intention of extending or renewing the lease. So, after only a few months of being open, Carly faces the prospect of relocating to another location farther from the town center.

Being a cozy mystery, before long Carly finds a body behind her restaurant. And, one of her prized employees comes under a cloud of suspicion. Carly can’t let her employee be wrongly accused, and thus, the sleuthing begins.

I love grilled cheese as much as just about anybody. But, I have to admit, I had my doubts about a series centered around a grilled cheese restaurant. However, after reading just a few pages of Up to No Gouda, I was hooked and my misgivings vanished. The setting has all of the classic (and thus attractive) elements of cozy mysteries. Balsam Dell is literally a cozy village. Carly is surrounded by old and new acquaintances in this small town and in her cafe. Carly is widowed, but not so recently that she doesn’t have a budding potential romance. Also, she is quite familiar with the older police chief who is an old friend of her family. And, there is a small dog (pictured on the cover) who becomes part of the story. (I almost forgot to mention that there are grilled cheese tips and recipes at the end of the book.) 

I had a good time reading Up to No Gouda.  The setting is attractive, and the characters are memorable. My time reading this story just flew by. I hope there are many more entries in this charming series by Linda Reilly. 

If you’re interested in seeing other most recommended or popular Cozy Mystery authors/series, please visit the Most Popular & Recommended Cozy Mystery Series page on my site.

As part of my ongoing series highlighting the most recommended and popular Cozy Mystery series suggested by site readers, this month I will be discussing the first entry in Laurie Cass (aka Laura Alden)‘s first entry in her Bookmobile Cat Mystery Series, titled Lending a Paw.

Librarian Minnie Hamilton has spent the last three years in the small resort town of Chilson, Michigan, having taken up an assistant director position at the district library, having spent many happy summers there as a small child, staying with her aunt Frances, who still maintains guest rooms for the resort season. More recently, Minnie had acquired a new family member as well – Eddie, a stray cat black and white striped cat that had followed Minnie home from relaxing in a local cemetery.

Though she has been working in Chilson for some time, Minnie is starting another chapter in her career – she had the idea for a bookmobile attached to the local library, driving about town to visit readers and distribute books, and as her idea, when it was decided to go along with the idea, she was the person who would end up driving it.

Naturally, it was a bit of a surprise to her that there would be a co-pilot for the drive – her cat Eddie – and even more of a surprise that at one of her first stops, Eddie would turn up a dead body instead of a book enthusiast looking for some light reading.

The deceased that Eddie and Minnie turned up, Stan Larabee, was a bit of a surprising figure – most of the town considered him a tight man with his money, someone who was more concerned with business than anything else, but he had also been the main donor to setting up the bookmobile, more or less single-handedly bankrolling the project. So despite the fact that most of the small town wasn’t terribly concerned at his sudden death, Minnie felt a certain responsibility – not only as the person who discovered him, but also one of the few that seemed to see him in a better light, no doubt one of the reasons that she began investigating on her own – or rather, with Eddie.

Set in a small midwestern sort of town, revolving around two comfortably Cozy topics, in this case cats and books, with a protagonist returning to a familiar family haunt after years away, Lending a Paw is a good example of a fairly conventional modern Cozy – and like most modern Cozies, it’s definitely a story that many modern Cozy fans will be able to sit down and spend some time with. This isn’t an innovation in mysteries by any means, but the interactions of the characters and especially of Eddie make it quite worthwhile to any fans of a combination of mysteries, cats, and bookmobiles.

As part of my ongoing series highlighting the most recommended and popular Cozy Mystery series suggested by site readers, this month I will be discussing the first entry in Libby Klein‘s first entry in her Poppy McAllister Mystery Series, titled Class Reunions are Murder.

This book is another relatively recent Cozy, released in 2018, though the series already has seven entries – some authors really have a talent for writing quickly! Though it’s also possible she had a few written before getting them published. As such, it definitely has a lot of the hallmarks of a modern Cozy – specifically, a down-on-her-luck sleuth who is ready to move on to a new career, new town, etc.

In this case, Poppy isn’t actually looking to move back home at the beginning – she’s a recent widow in her early 40s who is still going through the grieving process for her husband, and only intends to go back to her childhood home of Cape May, New Jersey, to attend her high school class reunion. She doesn’t really even want to go to that, but is pressured by her old high school friends. All of them were former nerds/outcasts in their high school experience, and have received personal invitations to the reunion from their mutual bully, Barbie, who wanted to meet with them privately at some point during the reunion.

When Poppy and friends do run into Barbie at the reunion, she’s combative and insulting not only to them, but to the majority of her other former classmates. Naturally, as in many Cozies, the meanest person introduced is given cosmic karma for their attitude by being killed after antagonizing a large group of people who already have no reason to love her. Poppy is the person who locates her body – and naturally becomes the primary suspect.

A bit of a warning – a few of the reasons Poppy’s life is a mess at the beginning of the novel are a bit darker than in most Cozies (even for the “grieving widow” subset of Cozy sleuths), so if you’re looking for a more pure “good-times” sort of Cozy, this might not be at the top of your list. Indeed, the fact that Poppy’s life legitimately seems depressing at the beginning of the novel is one of the big differences between this and other Cozies. Most Cozy protagonists have already gotten over the worst of their emotional issues before becoming determined to make a fresh start, but Poppy feels like a much more realistic depiction of someone who really legitimately needs to make a big change to start to get their life back on track.

Naturally, this being a Cozy, a lot of those problems start to unravel as Poppy is exposed to her old hometown, though they become replaced by new problems – most obviously the murder accusation, but also other complications like her bail being covered by her old high school boyfriend, her eccentric Great-Aunt Ginny needing more supervision now that she’s in her eighties, and other similar Cozy-ish sort of developments. The final takeaway is that Poppy does indeed start at a relatively low place – but in this case, it’s a good thing, because it gives the character a real ability to grow through the course of the novel. This is definitely a transition that’s worth seeing, and one that is surprisingly rare in protagonists of the Cozy genre. 

If you’re interested in seeing other most recommended or popular Cozy Mystery authors/series, please visit the Most Popular & Recommended Cozy Mystery Series page on my site.

PS: If this tips the scales for any recipe fanatics out there, this novel does include seven recipes at the end.