A review by persnicketypaul
Guilty as Cinnamon by Leslie Budewitz

4.0

I love cozy mysteries because they tend to add a comedic touch and an interesting theme to the standard mystery novel. In "Guilty as Cinnamon," Leslie Budewitz talks a lot about spices with the main character, Pepper, working in a spice shop and getting tangled up in a crime involving ghost peppers that she may have possibly sold to the killer. I enjoyed this book for the most part, especially given that it was the second in a series (of which I haven't read the first). It was easy to get into and enjoy, and you can easily tell that Budewitz' writing is very well-thought-out. In the beginning, the number of characters was overwhelming because I didn't have a good enough grasp of who anyone was yet, so that kept me from really recognizing or understanding individual characters till partway through the book, but I eventually caught up. This book is filled with quirky humor and interesting people/scenarios that made it an enjoyable read. I was a bit skeptical about the criminal investigators' inability to discover a piece of information that Pepper uncovered (to be unnamed for you to discover on your own). At times, Budewitz' usage of sentence fragments threw me off and distracted me, but I can see why she chose to use them, as they make the reading experience more casual and connect the reader more to Pepper and the overall story. "Guilty as Cinnamon" was well worth the read, and I can see myself reading another Spice Shop Mystery in the future!

*I won a free copy of this book through Goodreads First Reads.