Book Review: Death of a Tom Turkey (Hayley Powell Food and Cocktails Mystery, #18) by Lee Hollis

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Death of a Tom Turkey (Hayley Powell Food and Cocktails Mystery, #18)  by Lee Hollis  opens with Tom Farley and his neighbors in a snit because he's the last holdout to sell his house to a property developer who wants to build a resort. When Tom is shot at a pre-Thanksgiving community gathering and hospitalized, Hayley Powell puts her amateur sleuthing skills to good use. Thank you to NetGalley and Kensington Publishers for providing me with an Advanced Readers Copy (ARC) of this cozy mystery. I received a copy of this book for free in exchange of my honest opinion and review of the story. I loved the fact that this latest installment of the Hayley Powell Food and Cocktails Mystery  series had a theme around the Thanksgiving holiday and included live turkeys in the plot. It was good to visit some familiar characters. Since this is the eighteenth installment in the series, Lee Hollis didn't go into much detail of the background of those reoccurring characters; however, she...
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Book Review: Good Enough To Eat by Stacey Ballis

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Melanie Hoffman, a former lawyer, has lost half of her body weight and opened Dining By Design, a gourmet take out cafe that specializes in healthy food. She's barely opened the doors when her husband announces that he wants a divorce and is leaving her for another woman . . . one that is double the size of Melanie. Surprised by this, she now faces financial hardships and finds a roommate in the most unlikely person . . . a twenty something woman with pink hair and a quirky personality. On top of that, she starts dating a documentary filmmaker named Nathan. With all the changes, Melanie realizes she still has a lot to learn about life and herself.

Good Enough To Eat by Stacey Ballis can easily be defined as chick lit. I might have mentioned in other reviews that chick lit is not a genre I normally choose for myself. However, one of the book clubs I was in briefly had picked this book as their monthly selection. I decided to read it because I liked the premise of the book. Unfortunately, it wasn't as good as I thought it would be. Honestly, I thought it was just okay and tended to drag a bit.
First thought is that it seems like it might be semi-autobiographical. The every day details and humdrum aren't usually explained in depth like Good Enough To Eat does. As for the actual writing, it seems a bit stilted like it was written in a journal and expanded to make a book. These things are not makings of a gripping book.
For a while, it seemed like all of the publishers were enthralled with books that had to do with bakeries, cafés, or anything that had to do with food because a lot of the books we read in my various book clubs had to do with this topic. And, the majority of them had recipes throughout the book or at the end of the book. I definitely had burn out on these kind of books as well because there were just too many of them!
I gave three stars out of five to Good Enough To Eat even though I didn't particularly care for it. Part of the reason for this score is that I had to give it a better rating than I gave The Icing on the Cupcake by Jennifer Ross because it had more realistic scenes.

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