Baked Alaska

Baked Alaska

By: Josi S. Kilpack

I don’t know about you, but I definitely want to try some Baked Alaska.  It looks absolutely divine.  All that chocolate and strawberry baked into one desert.  Yum.  And who knew you could actually bake ice cream?  That fact was as foreign to me as Shawn’s aloofness to his mother during their Alaskan cruise.  The once loveable Shawn is now keeping secrets from Sadie. Pete and Breanna even know what’s up.  Why are they keeping Sadie out of the loop?

Summary

Secrets are always at the heart of a mystery, and that is the last thing Sadie wants to solve while on an Alaskan cruise with her children and boyfriend.  Unfortunately secrets have a ticket to board the cruise as well.  They start the moment Sadie finds Shawn talking to a mysterious woman whom he refuses to talk about.  Soon the secret leaks out to Breanna and Pete, leaving Sadie in the dark.  When Mysterious Woman is found unconscious and a man dies in the buffet line, Sadie starts her own investigation, convinced she’ll get to the bottom of Sean’s secret if she finds out what happened to these people.

Sadie’s Family at the Center

This book wasn’t so much about the mystery as it was about Sadie’s family relationships.  She comes to realize that though her relationship with her children is good, that relationship changes as her children grow older.  She won’t always be the one who they go to when they scrape their knee, get pushed over on the playground, or are trying to find themselves.  Sadie has to learn that as she travels through the beautiful Alaskan country. 

Relationships Explored

Breanna is trying to plan her wedding, but her soon-to-be mother in law keeps getting in the way.  She wants Breanna wedding to be everything Breanna doesn’t want.  Liam, Breanna’s fiancé, is caught in the middle of it.  Breanna and Liam’s relationship are tested in Baked Alaska.  Can Breanna really handle being the wife of a well-to-do English gentleman?  Though this isn’t the main relationship readers follow in the book, it nevertheless delves into Breanna’s character more than in previous books where Breanna is hardly present. 

Sadie and Sean’s relationship is at the core of Baked Alaska.  Perhaps the real mystery isn’t what made Mysterious Woman pass out, or what happened to the man who collapsed in the buffet line, but how Sean and Sadie can keep their mother-son relationship without Sadie treading too much on Sean’s life.  The mystery is the background story for the relationships blossoming in this book, including Pete and Sadie’s.  But I’ll stop there.  I don’t want to give anything away. 

Personal Review

I enjoyed this book for the family element contained within.  I feel the family relationships were explored in more depth in Baked Alaska than in any previous book in the Sadie Hoffmiller series, which makes this book stand out among other books in the series.  I would highly recommend reading this series if only to get to Baked Alaska.  It may have you questioning where you fit in with your family and how your relationships have changed with family members. 

Tres Leches Cupcakes

Tres Leches Cupcakes

By: Josi S. Kilpack

Undercover work.  That’s all Sadie is doing.  Harmless, gather-people’s-name-and-address undercover work.   Then she and her new friend, Margo, uncover two dead bodies at an archeological site in Santa Fe, New Mexico.  It seems Sadie’s safe stay in Santa Fe isn’t too safe after all.

Summary

Jane is still a threat to Sadie.  So Pete ships her off to Santa Fe to stay with his cousin Caro, and to be an undercover informant for the Bureau of Land Management.  It’s dirty work, but Sadie is at least safe, until Sadie and Margo go poking around for answers as to what the bodies were doing in the archeological site, and who put them there. 

Sadie can’t run away from this mystery either.  No matter how hard she tries the mystery follows her against her will.  This time she is forced to solve it. 

Plot Elements

Sadie is slowly learning to control her anxiety attacks.  Even with being in a bar fight, getting arrested, being kidnapped, and chased through the night desert, she keeps calm through every situation.  She knows that if she doesn’t it could cost her, her life.  This shows Sadie’s developing character.  Even a 50 odd year old woman can overcome her weakness and continue to help others.

As mentioned before Sadie isn’t too keen on investigating this mystery.  She wants to watch the hot air balloon fiesta and continue to do her harmless undercover work.   Fate would not have it, and Sadie is literally forced to solve the mystery by none other than the suspects themselves.  This plot element makes Tres Leches Cupcakes different than the other books in the series.

These two elements add the necessary depth that make this mystery entertaining and keep the series moving forward. 

Bonus: A Lesson on Relationships

Caro and her husband, Rex, are going through a tough time in their marriage.  As empty-nesters they each of different ideas of what their life will now be like.  While Caro and Sadie are discussing this relationship it got me thinking of how relationships change when major events happen in our lives.  Both parties must communicate in order to make the relationship last.

This happened recently in my own life.  My husband and I were blessed with a daughter (our first child).  With this new addition to our family our roles shifted, expectations changed, and sometimes tempers ran high.  We both have to come to a middle ground and understand what the other person is going through. 

A similar thing happens in Tres Leches Cupcake with Caro and Rex.  They come to realize they both need to better understand one another to make their marriage work. 

Kilpack often places strained relationships in her books.  Sometimes they are worked out, and other times they are not.  Not every relationship works out the way we want it to.  In addition if we want our relationships to be happy we have to work at it, just as Rex and Caro must do in Tres Leches Cupcakes.

Personal Review

Though Tres Leches Cupcakes was a page-turner, it wasn’t my favorite in the series.  I understand why it was necessary to put in the series—it shows Sadie further overcoming her anxiety.  

Pumpkin Roll

Pumpkin Roll

By: Josi S. Kilpack

That looks like a delicious roll of stomachache (I’m lactose intolerant, and all that cream would make my stomach to backflips and somersaults at the same time).  That’s exactly how Sadie’s stomach feels as she delves deeper into her first ever ghost mystery.   There’s only one problem: Sadie doesn’t believe in ghosts. 

Summary

Pete and Sadie are babysitting Pete’s grandsons in Boston for a few days when the neighbor across the street starts digging in her front yard and makes weird hand motions.  Pete’s grandsons say she’s a witch.  Sadie doesn’t buy it even when strange things start happening in the house.  Sadie attempts to meet her neighbor, thinking she is causing the strange things to happen.  Soon Sadie is delving into a mystery that may be too big for her to handle.  After all, how to you solve a ghost mystery when you don’t believe in them?  Things get really tricky when the witch lady is found injured in her home and Sadie becomes a suspect.  Further, Jane keeps popping up, wanting to help Sadie.  Sadie is still reluctant to let Jane into her life after she printed the article that sent Sadie’s reputation spiraling downward.

A Different Twist

This is the first book in the Sadie Hoffmiller series where there isn’t a dead body.  It’s more than just solving who killed some stranger (as it has been since book two).  It’s about what is happening in Sadie’s life.  Things are happening to Sadie and company rather than to someone else, which made the story more intense.  As the book winds down Sadie must use all her mental strength and wit to survive.  In the past she usually had to endure physically until help arrived. 

A past character, Jane, shows up and plays a significant role in Pumpkin Roll.  Jane changes Sadie’s life, therefore changing the series and the story line of all books following Pumpkin Roll. 

Pete and Sadie’s relationship is also explored more fully in this book as well.  In the past books Pete popped in and out at various times.  In this book he is in the entire thing.  We get to see Sadie and Pete interact in almost every chapter, watching their relationship strengthen. 

Personal Review

Pumpkin Roll had my stomach doing somersaults.  It probably helped that I read it in October, which made the creepiness ooze from the pages.  Even if I hadn’t read the book in October I still would have enjoyed it.  I loved how it wasn’t a murder mystery book and how the things happening throughout the book directly affected Sadie.  This was one of my favorite books in the series.  

Blackberry Crumble

Blackberry Crumble

By: Josi S. Kilpack

Sadie never intended to be a mystery solver.  She thought she was always thrown into them.  Garrison, Colorado thinks differently.  They suspect murder follows her  wherever she goes.  The world in which Sadie has known is crumbling.  Gossip bubbles in her wake, people she once thought were friends avert their eyes.  Sadie needs a break.  Why not take on another mystery?

Summary

When a news article by Jane appears in the Denver Post all about Sadie Hoffmiller, Garrison starts whispering.  Is Sadie really a magnet for murder?  Is she the one actually causing all these deaths? 

Sadie needs to get out.  The opportunity arrives in the form of another mystery. May Sanderson doesn’t think her father died of a heart attack.  She enlists the help of Sadie to help solve the mystery.  Sadie puts her armature detective work to the test in finding the real reason May’s father died.  Along the way she discovers new recipes, broken relationships, new friends, and a surprise ending. 

WARNING: This contains spoilers on who Sadie chooses to be in a relationship with.

Personal Review

Blackberry Crumble wasn’t my favorite book in the Sadie Hoffmiller series.  It was slower paced, with Sadie mostly sitting in her car, cleaning out Mays father’s house, or making bacon ice-cream (the recipe is included in the book if you’re brave enough to try it).  Sadie comes by her answers more slowly than in previous books, and it’s not until the last couple chapters that we have any idea how Mays father died.  In the other books I felt we had suspects the whole time, and when the murder was revealed it wasn’t a huge surprise as it was in Blackberry Crumble nor did the murderer seem less like a murderer.

Sadie doesn’t discover much about herself in this book, except for the fact that she’s really hard to kill.  Her relationships with her family and Pete aren’t explored a whole lot (although she does question if Pete is really right for her).

Key Lime Pie

Key Lime Pie

By: Josi S. Kilpack

Sadie is at it again.  Another body, another mystery.   Her motives and objective are different, and her life is starting to look like a teenage girl’s with too many boyfriends to choose from (don’t worry it’s still clean).

Summary

When Sadie’s new friend, Eric, gets a call from the Florida police saying they may have found his daughter who has been missing for several years, Eric doesn’t hesitate to jump on a plane and head down there.  Before he leaves he asks Sadie to come with him.  Sadie is torn.  She’s in a relationship (which at the moment is rocky) with Pete, but also wants to be there for her friend Eric.  Sadie also suspects that her feelings toward Eric are more than just friendship.  She wants to see if go-with-the-flow Eric is more suited for her than steady and stable Pete.

Sadie goes. 

Sadie and Eric find out a lot about each other and about themselves.  The question is, are they ready to face the truth.  Is Sadie ready to face the truth about her feelings and why she ultimately went to Florida?  Is Eric ready to face the truth about his daughter?  Could the truth be too much for him to bear?  How she disappeared and where she ended up.

How This Book is Different

It becomes clear in the first several chapters Sadie and Eric are not looking for the murderer, they are trying to find out if Eric’s daughter is still alive, and if so where is she.  This differs from the previous books in the series in that there is a murder and Sadie is looking for the murderer, not a missing person who may or may not be dead.

Sadie’s motives are also different in Key Lime Pie.  Instead of curiosity being the main reason she desires to solve the mystery (as it has been in the previous two books), Sadie’s desire is to help Eric.

Relationships also start to bubble in this book.  Sadie has to choose between Pete and Eric.  Where is her heart?  In the series Sadie has never had an emotional conflict before.  Not only do these things develop Sadie’s character more, but they also add depth to the series as a whole.

Personal Review

This is the book that kept me reading.  If Key Lime Pie were about another murder to solve I probably wouldn’t have kept reading onto book number five.  But because Key Lime Pie was more about Sadie’s development and choices I wanted to continue with the series to find out what happened to Sadie, not about what happened in the next mystery, although the next mystery is nothing like the previous ones! 

I thought Pete’s and Eric’s characters were very well done in this book.  I have found that many of Kilpack’s characters are flat, meaning they don’t have much depth to them and can be traded out with one another.  Not Pete and Eric.  These two men are non-interchangeable.  Though we have known Pete since Lemon Tart, and he’s not a big character in the previous books, there is a depth to him in Key Lime Pie that is not seen in any of the previous books.  As for Eric, we have only met him in Devil’s Food Cake, yet I felt as if I knew him while reading Key Lime Pie.  He is only physically present for about half the book.  At the end of it I had a good idea of what his character was like, and who I thought Sadie should choose to be with.