Review: Scone Cold Dead by Maddie Day

Scone Cold Dead (Country Store Mystery #13)
by Maddie Day

My Rating: 4 stars

Genre: Cozy Mystery
Age Category: Adult
Type of romance: m/f

Blurb:
After a body is found in a local farmer’s field, country store and café owner Robbie Jordan suspects that a newcomer in South Lick, Indiana, may not be a stranger to everyone in town . . .

Robbie is just weeks away from giving birth. While her husband Abe scrambles to get the house ready for their baby’s arrival, Robbie makes last minute arrangements to keep her shop and restaurant, Pans ’N Pancakes, up and running when she’s on maternity leave. And it seems Robbie and Abe aren’t the only ones grappling with anxiety—a stranger is causing a stir in town and Robbie’s Aunt Adele appears unusually preoccupied at the baby shower . . .

But when someone finds a body in the ram field on Adele’s sheep farm, it’s Robbie’s turn to be worried. Especially after Chief Buck Bird uncovers a troubling link between Adele and the possible murder victim. Robbie has no choice but to knit the clues together and solve this mystery before anything else gets flocked up . . .

My Review

I received a free copy from the publisher through Netgalley and voluntarily reviewed it.

Scone Cold Dead is the thirteenth book in this series already and as one of my favorite cozy mystery series I was excited to return to this series for another mystery. My favorite part of this series is seeing Robbie live her life and how this developed and changes throughout the series. I also liked reading about the restaurant she runs and I like how much of the book takes place there. In this book Robbie is heavily pregnant and being due soon when another dead body appears.

The mystery was a good one mostly. I liked how it made sense for Robbie to get involved when people close to her were involved in the mystery. Although I always feel a bit conflicted when a main character who is pregnant gets into danger as it just doesn’t seem smart or right to jump into danger with a baby in them. I did appreciate how Robbie was even more careful in this book and took her safety seriously, she told people were she went or took someone with her and did most of her sleuthing with other people around. I liked the secrets and history that came up throughout the mystery with people who had known the dead man in his past. I wasn’t quite sure what to think of the reveal at the end as it felt a bit anticlimactic to me, but I could also see why the author decided to end it that way.

I liked reading more about Robbie, although I always feel a bit uncomfortable reading about pregnant main characters as I don’t like reading about pregnancy and babies. Despite that I still had a great time with this book. Robbie is preparing for this change in her life and I also liked seeing the restaurant doing well, although some changes are going on there as well. It’s fun to read more about all the familiar side characters and see how close all these characters are. This town and the character in it feel familiar and I like reading about them.

To summarize: I had a great time reading this one. While pregnancy and babies isn’t a topic I like reading about I still enjoyed this book despite that. There is another mystery Robbie gets involved in and I liked all the history and secrets that were revealed after the dead body is found. The reveal at the end felt a bit off to me. I especially like the daily life parts with Robbie’s life developing and changing throughout the series and reading about her running her restaurant and interacting with her fiends, family and employees. All in all this was another great book in the series and I hope there will be more to come.

Links:
– Goodreads
– Bookbub
– Amazon
– B&N
– Kobo

You can also read my review on Goodreads and Bookbub.