Review: The Golden Spoon by Jessa Maxwell

Jessa Maxwell's debut combines the excitement of a baking competition with a whodunit murder mystery.

Six Contestants are chosen to compete in the famous Bake Week, filmed on the grounds of Betsy Martin's family estate - what could go wrong?! This was a fun mystery that highlighted an intense baking competition for the Golden Spoon. The baking coming out of this book is delicious and I applaud the in-depth descriptions of the desserts.

I always enjoy it when there's a big reveal at the beginning of a book and then you're thrown back in time to where it all began. With multiple characters and a mystery to work into the competition, I think the author does a good job tying everything together at the end.

I do wish some of the elements that were building up the mystery were given more development - but the book was well paced and the characters all had their own flaws, making things very interesting. An obstacle for me was alternating between perspectives - you didn't always get the full picture or all the information to really know what was going on and some of the conversations, when given from two different perspectives didn't always line up.

Around 65% through this book I realized I had to adjust my expectations for the type of murder mystery this was - I broke down and skimmed through some Goodreads reviews because I felt like I was just missing something. I'm not an avid cozy mystery reader, so that's probably why I didn't come to this conclusion myself - but that is a common comparison I saw in other book reviewers' comments. Also, it is absolutely tagged in the Cozy Mystery genre, so big whoops on my part for missing that. After adjusting my very skewed expectations I was able to fly through the rest of the book and enjoy it a bit more.

Overall I enjoyed this book, rating it 3 stars for the delicious bakes, unique characters, and well-packaged ending. Thanks to NetGalley and Atria Books for providing a digital copy for my honest opinion.