Review: Magnolia Table: A Collection of Recipes for Gathering

Magnolia Table: A Collection of Recipes for Gathering by Joanna Gaines
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

If you ever watch HGTV's show Fixer Upper, then your acquainted with Joanna Gaines, the designer who brings her clients dream home to life. In their last season of the show, one of the projects was a restaurant which had been a staple with history in the Gaines's town of Waco, Texas. Chip and Joanna bought the restaurant and as usual Joanna put her spin on it and updated the restaurant which now they own.

In this book, Magnolia Table is also the name of their restaurant, Joanna shares some of her families recipes and some she put on the menu as well. The recipes in this book are easy for a home cook to make, as Joanna isn't a chef by trade. The beautiful pictures of the food will make your mouth water, and get even the most inexperience cook to make these. The instructions are easily laid out, for one to understand. Their are recipes for almost every family or individual to fix and will satisfy your hunger.

I also like the little backstory to the recipes and the feel like she was actually telling me about the recipe or the meaning of the recipe, or even the memory that went along with it. Even though she isn't a renounced chef, Joanna has put together a wonderful cookbook, for which you can pass down from generation to generation.

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Review: Shot in the Dark

Shot in the Dark by Cleo Coyle
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Claire Cosi and her posses are back for another fun filled adventure at the Village Blend Coffeehouse. This time around Claire's coffeehouse has been voted the best hook-up place in all of NY, thanks to this new dating app, Cinder, which her ex-husband and coffee finder Matteo is using. But when one Cinder-ella has a bad dating experience with a Cinder-fella, and the jilted lady confronts the man in the coffee shop with with a gun (which is only filled with blanks) Claire's business takes the hit when the video goes viral.

But like all good Coffeehouse books, there's always someone in trouble and Claire is always there to solve the murder, this time it ends up as a Cinder-fella. Of course that's not all that's happening in this book. Joy, Claire and Matteo's daughter is thinking that the NYPD Detective Franco, that she's been seeing is cheating on her and asks her mother to help her find out. Tucker, her assistance manger, is so upset because of the business being slow, is blaming himself for becoming friends with Gun-Girl and quits the coffeehouse, Mike, Claire's fiancee has to go to London to work with them on this new drug, Stix, whom all the kids are using now. And of course Madame and her love life with all the men from the Silver-Fox app, which she's been using. So there's plenty of catching up to do with gang.

With each book we characters have been well developed in which they feel like friends than just characters. With well developed background theme and great writing, the author has made this series into of the most popular cozy mysteries out there. Cleo Coyle is the pen name for writer Alice Alfonsi and her husband Marc Cerasini. Together they bring together the character's, story line, and very well developed themes.

This fast-pace, entertaining, fun, suspenseful, humorous, engaging story with twist and turns that will have you second guessing yourself as to who the murder really is.


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