Teaser Tuesday and Review: Devil's Food Cake by Josie Kilpack

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by Miz B at Should be Reading

This week's teaser is taken from Devil's Food Cake by Josi S. Kilpack.

"Sadie squinted in the faint glow from the exterior lights, finally picking out the shape of a person leaning against her car. Sadie's heart abruptly began racing within her chest. Fear wasn't something that came easily for her, but finding herself alone in a parking lot with a stranger- and armed with only a devil's food cake- was a precarious circumstance."

Like the teaser? Here's my take on the book.

My thoughts One of my favorite genres to read is the cozy mystery. Pair that with culinary skills of a middle aged amateur sleuth, add in some quirky characters and perhaps a budding romance and you have a winner in my opinion. Devil's Food Cake is just that!

The main character Sadie Hofmiller, a widowed cooking aficionado who just seems to easily channel her inner busybody, sets out to solve a murder mystery in Garrison, Colorado; not exactly what she had in mind for the evening.

When Sadie arranged for Tom Mortenson, a former resident, to speak at the library fund raiser dinner regarding his best selling book, everyone expected a nice quiet dinner meeting. Between the prime rib and devil's food cake, no one could foresee that just fixing a microphone would set off a shot gun blast that immediately killed Tom's agent, Mark Ogresky. None of the attendees paid $150.00 a plate to be scared out of their wits!

Who could possibly have gone to such trouble rigging the shotgun like that? What was their motive and when did anyone even have the opportunity to set it up? This made Sadie wonder if Mark was the real target or was it a mistake and did someone have it in for Tom?

Tom had left Garrison years ago following the suicide of his son and murder of his son's girlfriend. Sadie had to first figure out if anyone from the past still held a grudge. Through a lot of digging and some madcap adventures, Sadie, her son Shawn and a new acquaintance by the name of Eric managed to get themselves in the thick of the action despite the police telling them to just go home. Of course, that didn't stop Sadie!

Just when I thought it was a wrap and I had it figured out, a big turnaround happened at warp speed. Whoa, didn't see that twist coming. Good one, Josi! I had to speed read to the end I was so surprised and couldn't wait to see what happened.

Sadie Hofmiller and her teenaged son, Shawn, were fun characters to read. It's as if he and his mother had been solving crimes together for a long time, their thoughts meshed well together in figuring out what clues to follow. I also really liked another character that was introduced in this book and that was Eric. He turned out to be much more than I thought he would initially. I hope to see him again in the next book.

For fans of culinary cozies, this is definitely one for your wish list. And the recipes? I was drooling just reading the devil's food cake recipe. Devil's Food Cake is the third in this culinary series by Josi Kilpack. For more info on the author and her books you can visit her website or her blog .

Disclosure: A review copy of the book was provided by the author through

Pump Up Your Book promotions.