✱✱AudioBook Review✱✱ Blind Bake by Denise Grover Swank

 

Blind Bake Maddie Baker Mystery, Book 1 By: Denise Grover Swank Narrated by: Shannon McManus & Chris Brinkley

The first book in the new Maddie Baker Mystery series by New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal best seller Denise Grover Swank.

Maddie

In the last few months, my life has gone to crap. My uncle died. I gave up my life to move back to my hometown to take care of my ailing aunt. And oh...I unwittingly drove a guy to his murder. Not exactly a stellar restart.

But things just keep getting worse, because the sexy-as-hell, yet stick-up-his-butt homicide detective in charge of solving the case thinks I had something to do with it, and he won't leave me alone.

Even more concerning? It turns out the victim was one of the last people to see my mother alive before her unsolved murder 18 years ago.

Noah

I left a big-city police department for a fresh start in a smaller town. Less crime. Less murder. But three months later, I’ve been handed the murder investigation of the most hated man in town. The list of potential suspects is as long as Santa’s naughty list, but one name keeps popping up.

Maddie Baker.

She’s infuriating as hell, but is she a cold-blooded murderer? My instincts tell me no, yet I can’t exactly trust those. The last time I let myself presume someone was innocent, I ended up with a bullet wound and a broken heart.

Momma Says: 3 stars⭐⭐⭐

Blind Bake surprised me with its grit, and I'm still not quite sure where it falls in either genre or trope. It has elements of a cozy mystery, but then it gets dark and sometimes disturbing. Some subject matter is about as far from "cozy" as it can be, while other parts are more laid back and humorous. I will say that the story leans more toward the dark and twisted the further into it you get. Some things are a little over the top and require a good deal of suspension of disbelief. That said, the mystery did hold my interest, and there's also some romantic tension between Noah and Maddie. We do get a satisfying ending for the murder in this first book in the series, but there's an ongoing mystery that is left unresolved, as well as the romance (or not). To be honest, I'm undecided whether I want Noah and Maddie to work in the long term or not. They do have chemistry, but I'm waiting to see how I feel about them as the series moves forward. Shannon McManus and Chris Brinkley narrate this one, and to the best of my recollection, this was my first time listening to either. They both capture the tone of the story quite well, and I'd certainly listen to them again. In the end, I liked the dark and gritty more than the cozy in this one. I also like the characters, so I'll be interested to see where things go from here. 

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