I came across this series when I answered a question in a Facebook group on cooking with a cast iron skillet. I love my cast iron skillet. I make all kinds of things in it. It is older than I am. A cozy mystery that includes cast iron skillet recipe? Yes, please. I bought the book to check it out and thoroughly enjoy myself! I really like the family and friends in this small town. I don’t want to say a lot about the plot so yes a dead body is involved along with another mystery that isn’t a dead body. Are they related or separate? I did not guess the ending at all. The ending is complete but there is something that happened to Jolie that I absolutely must have the next book to see how it goes. So maybe the ending is complete but not. I don’t know. What I do know is I’m definitely getting Jalapeño Cheddar Cornbread Murder. And this fall I’ll be on the lookout for Turkey Basted to Death, the book not dinner at my parents where my dad always says the turkey was basted to death. You know I have to get that book just for the title alone. My dad is going to crack up! I’m so looking forward to more books in The Cast Iron Skillet Mystery Series. ( )

I found this book on the small sale rack set up by Friends of the Library at my local library. I suspect it might have been purchased for the summer reading program and they had a couple copies left over and decided to sell them. I wasn't sure if the book was written for adults or teens--the language seems a bit simplistic at times for adults.

It's a shame the book looks a bit "cheaply made" because the story is decent and the characters are memorable. I like that it is set in a small Ohio town. I liked the town map at the front, but the way it was reproduced made it seem a bit blurry and the type was so small that it was hard to read some of the store names etc. on it. Also the cover promotes "tasty recipes inside" but recipes is a bit of a misnomer--there is one recipe printed (for Pineapple Upside Down Cake--and even at that, the "secret" ingredient is left out of the recipe and apparently you are expected to figure out what it is by reading the story to find where it is mentioned.) Yes, there are other recipes talked about in the book, but that's not usually what I think when I see the words "tasty recipes inside".

The main characters were well developed, but there were so many characters that I had trouble keeping them all straight and figuring out their history together. Bradley seems to have a history with one of the main characters that I never figured out and he's also kind of on-again, off-again with Lydia from what Jolie thinks in the book.

I liked that the whole town pulls together for the stray animal benefit (and probably for other causes as well). I liked Jolie's idea to try to get the food-related businesses in town to cooperate and to cross-promote each other rather than viewing each other as competition.

WARNING: SPOILERS MAY LIE AHEAD--READ AT YOUR OWN DISCRETION

Jolie and Ava have opened a restaurant using Jolie's family recipes (most made in cast iron cookware). The recipes are housed in a special box. The recipes and the box go missing. Then Ellie is found murdered behind the restaurant.

Accusations fly--one of them being that the family recipes weren't really owned by the Tucker family. Opal is arrested as a suspect in Ellie's murder. Betsy misses Ellie's funeral which is out of character for her. Jolie skips out of an event she promised her grandmother and her family she would do to try to find Betsy and gets a bit more than she bargained for.

Keith and Meiser seem to be being set up by the author to form a love triangle with Jolie. ( )