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Saturday, 24 June 2023

Bakeries and Buffoonery (Magical Mystery Book Club Book # 4) by Elizabeth Pantley

It’s a magical book club! When this group chooses a book, magic happens. The mystery comes to life, and they find themselves part of the story. To exit the book and get back home, they need to solve the mystery and reach The End.

This time, the club chooses a book called The Great Cake Rivalry, because, well … cake! They read the back cover and it’s unanimous. So off they go into another grand adventure into a town aptly named Frosting.

Frosting is a rural town in an idyllic setting. The people live quiet lives most of the year. But in the spring, things change. The Annual Cake Competition becomes the focus of every man, woman, and child. They take this competition seriously. The cakes are spectacular. The festival is fabulous. For a week there are contests featuring all kinds of cakes. The people of the community become official tasters and vote for the winning cakes in each category.

The grand finale is a display of finely decorated cakes, made by the town’s bakeries. The winner of the best design receives a prize package that would make any baker dizzy.

Sadly, this event has been tainted. Once a year, each one different, but all somehow related to this event, a person is murdered. The main investigator is stumped, but that could be because he’s an inept buffoon.

Can the book club help the people of this community figure out who is causing this disturbing pattern of deaths, and stop another murder from happening? Can they figure out why some of the citizens dress so oddly, and why they always wear those unique backpacks? All while they fill themselves to the brim with cake, of course.  (Summary via Goodreads)


Many books should come with warnings, like scary, do not read after dark, or funny, may cause outburts of laughter.....but for this book Bakeries and Buffoonery the warning should indicate to the reader to have sugary snacks handy when you open the book up.  Once you start reading this story you are not going to want to set the book down to venture all the way into your kitchen to go through the cupboards and refrigerator looking for a worthy snack.   Quite honestly the warning should come with every book in the Magical Mystery Book Club Mystery series because the characters in this series do like to eat !!

Bakeries and Buffoonery is the fourth book in the Magical Mystery Book Club Mystery series by Elizabeth Pantley and no matter what book you read, if you've read the previous ones or started with this one, you will be an fan and want to be a member of this magical book club.

In this series main characters Paige and her Aunt Glo inherited the Snapdragon Inn from Paige's Grandmother, GeeGee.  Little did they know that the inn included a two story magical library in the basement and their cat, Frank, talks, and they organize a book club where the members meet and make lots of snacks on book club day and venture downstairs to the basement and the magical library.  When in the library they have a meeting, they separate and walk through the rows and shelves of books, where the books are binded together in groups of eight by twine.  Each member reads the back cover of the book and finds one that they would like to read and then they return to the table and everyone has their turn to read the back cover.  Once they have agreed on the book that they would like to read, the person who picked the book opens one of the books and begins reading out loud.   After a while the magical globe in the room will light up  and start spinning and the room with fill with a fog.  Once the fog settles the Inn and the members of the club will have been trasported inside the book and will be in the setting and will have to solve the case in order to return back to their normal time.

The members of the book club are always excited to enter a new book and start the adventure and in Bakeries and Buffoonery, they will be going in a book called The Great Cake Rivalry tp a town called Frosting and they will be competing in the Annual Cake Competition that lasts a week.  This all sounds tasty and fun but the reason they are there is to try to prevent a murder from happening.  Every year someone who doesn't like cakes sends threatening letters and someone dies at the end of the week's events.  There is an Inspector in the book and town so the group may try to work with him to solve the case.  

Frosting is not just a normal little town that likes cakes.....Frosting is home to numerous fairies.  Unfortunately the fairies have to hide their identities but they are still very recognizable and you can easily spot them.....but are they the ones involved in the murders or are they just trying to live their lives quietly.

Luckily for the Snapdragon Inn Book Club turned cake makers they have their very own baker in the house.  Little did the group know that motorcycle rider Vee is a baker and works in a bakery when not involved in the book club.  So under the watchful eye of Vee the team makes amazing cakes according to the categorizes assigned each day and even win one of the amatuer days....but her cakes do not come close to what the three bakeries in town make !!  

Readers will fall in love with everything in the series, you have a magical inn that has a two-story library in the basement, the inn travels with the book club when they decide on what book to jump into, they have a talking cat, and recently when they were in a book set in the Wild West, they solved the case and the deceased returned with them in the form of a ghost.  And now you are about to enter a book with ghosts, a talking cat, fairies and lots of cake ...... grab a sugary snack and get ready to have an amazing sugar high ........ 



1 comment:

  1. So glad you enjoyed the book club's tasty adventure! : - )

    ReplyDelete