It’s Christmas many years ago, and topping young Hannah Swensen’s wish list is becoming the go-to baker in Lake Eden, Minnesota. But as Hannah finds out, revisiting holiday memories can be murder . . . With her dream of opening The Cookie Jar taking shape, Hannah’s life matches the hectic December hustle and bustle in Lake Eden—especially when she agrees to help recreate a spectacular Christmas … Eden—especially when she agrees to help recreate a spectacular Christmas Ball from the past in honor of Essie Granger, an elderly local in hospice care. But instead of poring over decadent dessert recipes for the merry festivities, she instantly becomes enthralled by Essie’s old notebooks—and the tale of a woman escaping danger on the streets of New York . . .
Hannah’s surprised by Essie’s secret talent for penning crime fiction. She’s even more surprised when the story turns real. As Hannah prepares to run a bakery and move out of her mother’s house, it’ll be a true miracle if she can prevent another Yuletide disaster by solving a mystery as dense as a Christmas fruitcake . . .
Features Over a Dozen Cookie and Dessert Recipes from The Cookie Jar!
“Series fans will enjoy learning how the Cookie Jar bakery came to be.”
—Publishers Weekly
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As with all the books in the Hannah Swensen Mystery series this story is an easy to read cozy with amazing recipes. This story is a prequel so it dates back before the first 22 books to Hannah’s college days. For all the Hannah fans waiting to see what happens after the cliffhanger at the end of book 22 this will be a disappointment since you will not get any answers on the Ross situation. So now we will all need to wait anxiously for book 24.
I am finally caught up on the Hannah Swensen cozy mystery series by Joanne Fluke. I finished reading Christmas Cake Murder, the 23rd of 24 books, published in the last year. The next one is in ARC form and I’m hoping to get my hands on it soon as I’d rather not wait until early 2019 when it’s formally published. Overall, I’d give it 4 stars as it had a lot of the traditional elements we normally love in these books, but the mystery was very different.
The book takes place before the first one in the series actually took place. It’s the beginning tale of how Hannah got started at The Cookie Jar. The story is a reflection on all the major characters we’ve come to love and shows us what happened when Lars, Hannah’s father, passed away. We also see how Delores reacted, what drove Andrea to become a real estate agent, and how Michelle was in high school. It was lots of fun and helped provide us with some wonderful and tender moments about this beautiful family.
It was also a bit repetitive for regular readers as we knew 25% of this content already. I can overlook that tho, as I like the setting and relationships. The other big piece of the book was a different sorta mystery where a local citizen, Essie, has an accident (truly, an accident) and is in the hospital. Hannah finds her journal and reads the book Essie had been writing. Is it about herself? Someone else in Lake Eden? Completely made up? We find out in the last chapter as the entire time we’re meandering along, we’re clueless, too. Once we find out, it’s nice closure for this book but doesn’t really connect to all the others in the series in terms of the mystery. Part of me was hoping to learn a fun fact about a new connection among the town’s inhabitants. I sadly didn’t.
That said, normal recipes look good. Everything else is spot-on. But it’s just a re-cap book with a little bit of new content… I judge it on that merit rather than give it a poor rating because it didn’t have a mystery. That was never what Fluke intended… and I’m glad I had this chance to read a bit more about Hannah’s younger years. It’s worth a read but not necessary to read in order. It could even be read first. Okay, off to find an ARC of the latest book. Wow… I completed another series (just about, don’t deny me this fact please – LOL)!
The Hannah Swensen series of mysteries is one of my favorites series ever. I’ve always wonder how Hannah ended up opening her store The Cookie Jar and am happy to say with Christmas Cake Murder, we finally get all the answers.
I love the entire Swensen clan and loved going back to the beginning to see where it all started. We saw so many of my favorite characters in this flashback story of Hannah’s life. As it takes place right after her father’s death, it could have been a very emotional read, yet Joanne Fluke’s voice brought so much humor along the way to the story. It was still very emotional to see Mrs. Swensen begin to step back into the land of the living, as she had been mired in grief for so very long. I loved seeing her daughters come together to help find ways to get her moving and out of the house and give her a purpose to live again. Of course not to be outdone by her daughters, she not only starts living again, but wants to help make each of her daughter’s lives better along the way.
I loved seeing Mrs. Swensen step up to help make Lake Eden resident Essie’s dreams come true by recreating the Christmas Ball. Of course she need each of her daughters help to make it a reality, as well as Michelle’s best friend Lisa. I loved when Hannah found the story Essie had written; she shared it with her family in bits and pieces. I quickly realized there was way more to the story than it being just a work of fiction, but was happy to be surprised about some of the facts in the story. Once again we were given a wonderful mystery that pulled in Hannah and her family to solve.
Christmas Cake Murder was a wonderful addition to the Hannah Swensen mystery series. Readers were given the complete background to how Hannah was able to start her business. I loved getting so see a younger Hannah to see how much she has grown as a person over the course of the series. I highly recommend the entire series of books to fans of cozy mysteries and while I generally don’t believe in reading books out of order, if you wanted to read Christmas Cake Murder first, it would be a great way to get a feel for some of the characters in the series.
Rating: 4 Stars (B+)
Review copy provided by publisher
Another good book by Joanne Fluke
A wonderful holiday cozy mystery as a prequel. Great backstory to the series. You’ll love the mystery & fabulous recipes!
Even though it wasn’t the story I wanted after the last book it was still a GREAT book! I really liked reading about how Hannah got started at the cookie jar and Essie’s story wow, blew me away! I will read this again but may be I will read it as the first book in the series instead.
Christmas Cake Murder by Joanne Fluke, thank you Netgalley and the Publishers for allowing me to read this ARC book and give my honest opinion. This is a nice little cozy mystery, what I like is how the recipes are added so you can make them yourself. Interesting and quick read, good solid characters but did not grip me as much as I had hoped, as others written by this author have. Looking forward to reading more from this author.
A Christmas Cake Murder by Joanne Fluke is the latest in the Hannah Swensen mystery series.
Fluke takes us back in time to how Hannah came to start the cookie shop. It is also before Moishe and her love triangle.
It is a quick read and will get you in the mood for Christmas.
There is of course, a mystery, along with humor, and some yummy recipes.
I enjoyed the story though it was different then any of the others in this series and I have read all of them. I feel that Fluke is back as I have been some what disappointed in the last couple books.
I was given an ARC from Netgalley for an honest review.
I missed reading this book when it first came out. However, I recently got the chance to borrow it through Kindle Unlimited and I’m glad. This book is a flashback of when Hannah had first returned home to help her mother after her father’s death. It shows how she got her cookie truck (not to mention The Cookie Jar) and her condo, as well as taking us through the decision to not return to college.
In addition to helping her mother with personal tasks through her grief, she also takes on (with help from Michelle and Lisa) baking all of the cakes for a Christmas celebration to be held in Lake Eden. (Delores accepts the request that she organize the ball, as long as she has help.) This is to help cheer up a long-time resident who needs to move to the hospital for an injury and she has wonderful memories of a past instance of this ball, the centerpiece of which was a Cake Parade.
This was an excellent addition to the Hannah Swensen canon, explicitly telling us how things happened instead of leaving us to guess, as well as having two new mysteryesque side-plots along with the main.
Joanne Fluke writes a fun, short, and easy read about the beginning of Hannah’s knack for solving mysteries. We get to visit Lake Eden before The Cookie Jar was a reality, get an introduction to the many cast of characters we have come to know and love, and see how Hannah solves her first mystery. We even get a mystery within a mystery? But you’d have to read the novel to find out how. It’s a perfect novel for longtime fans of this series to see how it all began, as well as introduce new readers to all the fun. And, of course, there’s recipes!!
I have read most of her books and they are great!!!
This book with Hannah is great because it is more of her life before Ross. Her father had just pass away and her mother is really depress. Luckily a friend needs her help in making a wish come true for someone who has help the community for a long time. Also with that comes a small interesting tale which is interwoven in this story. A great ending as well. It does involve Christmas cakes and an interesting ball.
This book is set at the first Christmas since Hannah’s father has died. Hannah has dropped out of her graduate program and is home trying to help her mother, Delores, deal with life after her loss, and Hannah is beginning to worry. Fortunately, Grandma Knudson and Annie come up with the perfect project to get Delores’s mind off her loss. It seems Essie, a beloved member of the community, has fallen and broken her hip. In an effort to cheer her up, Delores is asked to organize a Christmas ball, with Hannah recruited to bake the cakes for the events. While all this is going on, Hannah begins to share her dreams of opening her own cookie and coffee shop. And a novel that Essie was working on captivates Hannah, Delores, Michelle, and Lisa.
You’ll note my teaser doesn’t mention the mystery. That’s because it isn’t until late in the book that it comes into clear focus, although enough bread crumbs have been laid out earlier that we do get a satisfying wrap up. Meanwhile, we get lots of planning for the ball and Hannah getting the things that will become staples of her life as we know it from the rest of the series. It’s fun for series fans, although even then I thought the book could have been shorter. Those new to the series definitely shouldn’t jump in here since it is so atypical.
Also love the recipes!
It’s a cozy mystery with recipes in a series featuring Hannah Swensen, co-owner of The Cookie Jar. Not as good a tale as some of the earlier ones, but it is worth reading. Not saying more on why I am not as big a fan as I was, other than the story line took a turn romantically and I didn’t feel there was background story in the earlier books to support it. Formulaic since then.
I love this series but was very disappointed in this book. It will not stop me from reading another book in this series hoping that she goes back to where she left off before this one. If not I might have to be done though. It just wasn’t up to her prior books. Way too many recipes in this one and the book just didn’t hold me like her others.
We get to go back in time a little to when Hannah was first opening her Cookie Jar bakery. This book was quite a bit different from the rest of the mysteries in this series that I’ve read. There wasn’t a lot of action until closer to the end. But it was still interesting to read about Hannah, her mom and her sisters’ lives when they were younger. I really liked their friend Essie that they were putting a Christmas Ball together for. She was the most loved community member because of everything she did for the kids, and now it was time to do something special for her. An interesting side story was the story that Essie had started but never finished. Hannah wondered if this story was about Essie herself, or someone she knew.
A heart-warming story for the Christmas season with a very happy ending!
I have read most of the books in this series and I love them and look forward to another one anytime.
Another great book!
I loved her series of books and the recipes are all delicious. If you want a fun, easy, relaxing book try this book.