Up to No Gouda by Linda Reilly

Up to No Gouda (Grilled Cheese Mysteries)

by Linda Reilly

The first in a delicious new culinary cozy series featuring a grilled cheese eatery owner who must solve murders in her small town before she is put under lock and brie
Back in Balsam Dell to heal after the death of her husband, Carly Hale is finally pursuing her lifelong dream—opening Carly's Grilled Cheese Eatery. After only five months, business is booming as Vermont vacationers and townspeople alike flock to lunch on her Party Havartis and other grilled cheese concoctions. All but Lyle Bagley, Carly's one-time high school boyfriend and now town bully who just bought the building that houses her eatery and wants Carly out. After a muenster of a fight, Carly's forced to put her nose to the rind and find a solution to keep her business afloat.
That is…until Lyle is discovered dead behind the dumpster of Carly's shop, and one of her employees becomes the prime suspect. In order to save her eatery and prove her friend's innocence, Carly must sleuth out the killer before she's the one who gets grilled.
With a delightful cast of characters, an inventive amateur sleuth, and a whole host of cheesy hijinks, Up to No Gouda is the perfect cozy murder mystery to melt into.

Reviewed by annieb123 on

4 of 5 stars

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Originally posted on my blog: Nonstop Reader.

Up to No Gouda is the series starter for a shopfront small-town cozy by Linda Reilly. Released 25th Jan 2022 by Poisoned Pen Press, it's 312 pages and is available in mass market paperback, audio, and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links. I've really become enamored of ebooks with interactive formats lately.

This is a promising start for fans of small town shopfront cozies. Protagonist Carly is a cafe owner with a shop that specializes in soup and grilled cheese in a myriad variations. The usual pool of small-town-oddball characters are present, there's skullduggery and hidden motives to be unearthed, and there's the hint of developing romance between Carly and a local guy.

Some of the characterizations and plot developments are admittedly a bit over the top and there are some twists which require a healthy suspension of disbelief, but all in all, it's a pretty good example of why the shopfront cozy subgenre is so popular. I found the denouement and resolution satisfying and well written. The language is squeaky clean and the violence is off-page and not very graphic.

The unabridged audiobook has a run time of 8 hours and 31 minutes and is narrated by Mia Gaskin. She has an interesting and nuanced voice with an American accent (sort of standard midwest, not an intrusive regional accent). She enunciates very well and although her voice is youthful (she's young), it doesn't detract from the read at all. The sound and production quality of the recording were high throughout.

Four stars. This would be a good light read for fans of cozies. It would be perfectly safe for work/commute reading. I'm interested to see what comes next for Carly and her friends. This is the sort of cozy with some recipes at the back of the book and this one includes some interesting twists on, of course, grilled cheese.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

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