Title:  Fondue or Die
Author: Korina Moss
Genre:  Cozy mystery      
Rating: 4 out of 5   

The lazy, hazy, dairy days of summer are coming to a close in the Sonoma Valley. . . and so is someone’s life.

The small town of Yarrow Glen’s neighbor, Lockwood, hosts an annual Labor Day weekend bash: Dairy Days. And Willa Bauer and her cheese shop, Curds & Whey, refuse to miss out on the fun. Willa is thrilled to celebrate her favorite thing—she is a cheesemonger after all—and this festival goes all out: butter sculptures, goat races, cheese wheel relays, even a Miss Dairy pageant. Too bad the pageant runner, Nadine, is treating Dairy Days prep like it’s fondue or die and is putting everyone around her on edge. When Willa finds Nadine’s dead body under years’ worth of ceramic milk jugs, the police aren’t sure whether the death was an accident. But fingers are pointing at Willa’s employee, Mrs. Schultz, who steps in to help the pageant after Nadine’s death. Someone wanted Nadine out of the whey, and Willa is going to find out who.

This was a cute cozy mystery story—and all the cheese references made me hungry! The setting here, a cheese shop in a small town, and the people associated with the shop, make this quirky and fun. Nosy people get on my nerves, so in any other situation, Team Cheese would be super annoying to me, but they manage to pull it off and keep me entertained as they try to solve another murder mystery.

Korina Moss is an award-winning author. Fondue or Die is her newest novel.

(Galley courtesy of St. Martin’s Press in exchange for an honest review.)

• book review
• books
• reading