The Crime Brulee Bake Off by Rebecca Connelly
Published: February 4, 2025
Summary from Goodreads:
An unexpected romance. A haunting mystery. Pastries to die for. The Great British Baking Show meets a cozy mystery with a contemporary romance and a Regency-era twist.
Amateur baker Claire Walker is thrilled to be a contestant on Britain’s Battle of the Bakers. She can almost smell the fresh pastries wafting through the air. If she can win the grand prize, she can ditch her teaching job and launch her baking career.
The Viscount of Colburn, Jonathan Ainsley, is the custodian of Blackfirth Park and an eligible bachelor. He reluctantly agrees to allow the cooking competition show to film on his estate, but when a contestant is found dead soon after filming begins, Jonathan is forced to get involved. To make matters worse, the baker’s death stirs up rumors of the legendary death of the tenth Viscountess of Colburn two hundred and fifty years earlier.
Even as suspicion falls on some of the bakers, a decidedly different kind of heat begins to simmer between Claire and Jonathan. If they are to have any hope of a future romance, they must first solve the mystery before the show gets canceled or someone else falls prey to what some believe is the Blackfirth Park ghost.
Confession:
I very much liked this wholesome romance with a twist of mystery to it. I would have liked it better if the mystery was a bit more front and center of the story, but it was still a lot of fun to read and I loved reading about all of the fun baked goods everyone was making.
The story is told from the two viewpoints of the main characters, Claire and Jonathan. They are both very sweet and kind characters with some quirks to them. Claire is very outgoing and likes meeting people and talking about baking. I was at first a little bit annoyed by her swearing using baking terms like ‘son of a biscuit’, but they soon grew on me and some of them were even cute. I loved how calm and competent she was while trying to solve a mystery and win a baking contest at the same time. Jonathan was outwardly grumpy but had a kind heart and I loved his inner dialogue. The romance was very wholesome and was nicely developed over the course of the story and I really enjoyed the two of them together. Their banter was a lot of fun.
The secondary characters were all nicely developed as well, and there were a lot of them. We didn’t get a lot of development on each of them, but enough to understand who they were as people. I especially liked Freya, the youngest of the group, as she often added moments of levity to tense situations. I have never watched the baking show this one is styled after, or any reality show similar to this one, but I felt that the scenes that revolved around the show were realistic enough. I liked the banter between the bakers and the hosts.
My biggest disappointment was the underdeveloped mystery. Both Claire and Jonathan were really reluctant detectives. They didn’t seem to even want to solve the mystery, but just sort of blundered around until it was obvious who the culprit was. They were more interested in investigating their feelings about each other. Also the mystery surrounding the death of the Viscountess 250 years ago had very little to do with the current murder, and it wasn’t even solved. This is apparently the first in a series, so perhaps the old mystery will eventually be solved? I certainly hope so.
If you like wholesome romances and enjoy baking or even just watching those baking shows, then this is a book you will enjoy. If you want a solid mystery that you can wrap your head around, this isn’t what you are looking for. This is a very light cozy mystery with a fun and sweet romance. The best part is the recipes in the back for some of the deserts they made in the story. Yum!
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