Book Review & Giveaway: Chicken Soup & Homicide by Janel Gradowski

About the book: Amy Ridley and her friend, Sophie, have perfected their chicken soup recipe, and the winter-weary residents of Kellerton, Michigan can’t wait to watch them compete against other local chefs in the Chicken Soup Showdown. But the charity event starts out with a bang, literally, when one of the rival chefs falls out of a freezer and onto Amy. If it wasn’t stressful enough for Amy to catch a dead body, the detective in charge of the investigation targets her best friend, Carla, as the chief suspect in the murder.

In order to clear her friend’s name, Amy does her own investigating. The problem is nobody liked the arrogant murdered celebrity chef, and soon her suspect list is longer than the list of ingredients in her secret chicken soup recipe. Can Amy figure out who killed the celebrity chef? Or will Carla be spending the spring in jail?

About the author: Janel Gradowski lives in a land that looks like a cold weather fashion accessory, the mitten-shaped state of Michigan. She is a wife and mom to two kids and one Golden Retriever. Her journey to becoming an author is littered with odd jobs like renting apartments to college students and programming commercials for an AM radio station. Somewhere along the way she also became a beadwork designer and teacher. She enjoys cooking recipes found in her formidable cookbook and culinary fiction collection. Searching for unique treasures at art fairs, flea markets and thrift stores is also a favorite pastime. Coffee is an essential part of her life. She writes the Culinary Competition Mystery Series, along with The Bartonville Series (women’s fiction) and the 6:1 Series (flash fiction). She has also had many short stories published in both online and print publications.

Enter Janel's Let's Party Giveaway here. (through March 8th, U.S. residents only)

Chicken Soup & Homicide is the second book in Janel Gradowski's Culinary Competition mystery series. It takes place during the Chicken Soup Showdown with local chefs competing for charity. The event comes to a halt, however, when Amy attempts to put butter in the industrial freezer backstage and Chef Britton falls out, quite frozen and quite dead. He was a total cad and made enemies everywhere he went but suspicion falls on Amy's best friend Carla. Carla's boyfriend is the detective on the case who is forced to step down due to conflict of interest, which ends up putting a major wedge between them. The new detective assigned to the case is totally inept and seems determined to make everyone's life miserable as he dreams up one ridiculous scenario after another.

Amy makes a good detective as she attempts to clear her friend's name, while also lamenting the fact that her workaholic husband is never around and seemingly doesn't even care that she's mixed up in another murder. I was quite proud of the fact that I picked up on clues that Amy missed leading me to correctly guess the killer before she did.

Murder, romance, humor, food...this mystery has something for everyone.

Giveaway: Leave a comment by noon eastern on Wednesday, March 11th, for your chance to win an e-book copy of Chicken Soup & Homicide. Don't forget your email address!