Book Review: Holiday Grind by Cleo Coyle

TITLE: Holiday Grind

SERIES: Coffeehouse Mystery, Book #8
AUTHOR: Cleo Coyle 

PUBLISHER: Berkley
PUBLICATION DATE: November 2, 2010 (first published 2009)

FORMAT: Mass Market Paperback, 384 pages
GENRE: Mystery, Holiday/Christmas
ISBN: 9780425237885

When Village Blend manager Clare Cosi finds a red-suited body in the snow, she adds solving Santa's slaying to her coffeehouse menu, only to discover the jolly old soul had a list that he was checking twice-and the folks on it were not very nice.

MY REVIEW: 

I won this book in a giveaway last year, and it arrived just in time for me to enjoy during the holiday season!

The star of the series is Clare Cosi, who is manager and part-owner of the Village Blend, a coffeehouse in New York. Her business partner is her ex-husband, Matteo "Matt" Allegro, who is an international coffee broker and is responsible for sourcing the beans for the coffeehouse. Matt's elderly grandmother actually owned the Village Blend, and she handed it down to Clare and Matt when they married.

Clare is hosting a private tasting party to sample the new holiday latte blends. It was actually the brainstorm of her friend, Alfred Glockner, to call them "Fa-la-la-la Lattes." When Alfred is late for the party, Clare decides to hit the streets to look for him. He volunteers as a Traveling Santa, so he can usually be found milling the streets in the area to raise money for the less fortunate. When Clare finds his sleigh and cashbox on the street with Alfred nowhere in sight, she becomes worried. She notices two sets of footprints leading into the alley, and only one coming out. She follows the trail and finds Alfred, who has been gunned down. She immediately calls the police and, while waiting for them to show, she notices that the snow is falling more heavily. She sees a trail of footprints that match Alfred's boots coming out of the courtyard into the alley. Realizing that the footprints would soon be obliterated by the falling snow, she follows them to try to figure out where Alfred had been.

Clare is an amateur sleuth, and she gets herself into all sorts of trouble poking her nose into other people's business! I found her to be a very likeable protagonist. The mystery definitely kept me on my toes, and there is much more going on than meets the eye. The romance between Clare and her boyfriend, NYPD Detective Mike Quinn, is sweet and realistic - they have their problems and misunderstandings just like everyone else.

I loved this cozy mystery! Coyle is a new-to-me author and, even though this is Book #8 in the Coffeehouse Mystery series, I did not have any trouble following along. However, the book does make reference to past cases which intrigues me even more to go back and read the rest of this series! I also want to get the back-story on Clare and Matt and also to find out more about Mike. I am definitely reading more!

MY RATING:

5 stars!!  I loved it, and I will likely re-read it again in the future! You should definitely read it!

This book qualifies as: 
#2 for my 2013 Outdo Yourself Reading Challenge
#2 for my 2013 Read-a-Latte Challenge
#1 for my 2013 Let Me Count The Ways Reading Challenge: Book Version
#1 for my 2013 Where Are You Reading? Challenge
#2 for my 2013 Global Reading Challenge 
#1 for my 50 States Challenge 2013
#1 for my The In the Middle Reading Challenge
#1 for my 2013 Women Challenge
#1 for my New Authors Challenge 2013
#1 for my 2013 Reading Challenge: First-Reads
#1 for my 2013 Sequel Challenge
#2 for my 2013 Books-in-a-Series Reading Challenge

#2 for my Embarrassment of Riches Reading Challenge 2013
#2 for my 2013 Free Reads Challenge
#1 for my Just For Fun Reading Challenge 2013
#2 for my 2013 Literary Exploration Reading Challenge
#2 for my 2013 Genre Variety Reading Challenge
#1 for Task #5 of my 2013 Sub-Genre Reading Challenge
#1 for my The Foodies Read 2013 Challenge
#1 for my Cruisin' thru the Cozies Reading Challenge 2013
#1 for my 2013 Mystery/Crime Reading Challenge
#2 for my Monthly Mix-up Mania: 2013 to 2015 Edition
Letter H for my 2013 A to Z Reading Challenge
Task #3 for my What's in a Name 6 Challenge
#1 for my 2013 Feminist Reads Challenge

View all my reviews