This is the 21st book in the Hannah Swensen series. If you are a die-hard read-in-order person and don’t know anything about the later books in the series, I would suggest not reading the review. Even the book descriptions for these later books could be considered spoilers. Just lettin’ you know! 😉
My Goodreads review:
Banana Cream Pie Murder by Joanne Fluke
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
SPOILERS INSIDE but not about the killer–if you haven’t read all or most of the previous Hannah Swensen books you may want to skip reading this review.
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Hannah Swensen Barton is on an amazing honeymoon cruise with her new husband, Ross, when at home her mom Delores finds her good friend Tori dead, murdered. Tori also happens to be Mayor Bascomb’s older sister. Of course when Hannah gets home she’s determined to investigate like usual but Mike doesn’t seem to mind as much as he did when they first met.
Meanwhile Hannah’s sister Michelle is now directing the Lake Eden Players’ play that will come out around Thanksgiving and staying with Ross and Hannah. Hopefully Hannah can figure out what happened to her mom’s friend and it’s going to take some checking around in Tori’s apartment which ends up being kind of a fun scene with Hannah, Michelle and Norman doing the snooping.
I had only read the fairly early books but I knew what was coming in this book since I heard that Hannah had gotten married previously. One thing that bugged me a little bit was that Hannah couldn’t figure out how to retrieve her voice mail which seems a little weird for the Hannah I knew in the earlier books. It honestly didn’t detract from the story from me though. I did enjoy the investigation. I always liked the chemistry between Hannah and Mike so I do plan to read the rest to see what happened to drive them apart (obviously Ross but apparently that happened quickly) if they’d ever gotten together to begin with (like they have in the TV movies which I realize have to be different from the books for various reasons).
I always get such a kick out of Delores and now even moreso that she is married to the local doctor. Andrea and Bill have two little girls now, Tracy and Bethie. Bethie is pretty adorable.
The mystery surrounding Tori’s death was really good and Hannah worked her usual magic in finding the killer. I hadn’t guessed who it was until a couple of clues were given towards the end.
Just about every chapter has one or two recipes at the end and boy do they sound scrumptious, especially the one for the banana cream pie. At the end of this book, there is also the first chapter of the next book that you can read.
Cuddle Up With a Cozy Mystery 