Kept me guessing almost to the end!! Good story and great sounding recipes, as usual!! ( )

This is a typical amateur sleuth runs circles around the pros cozy. Our heroine Hannah runs a cookie shop (as in she bakes cookies). She spends her life trying to decide between two men who are courting her, running around solving a crime with her two sisters, while her Mother, a budding author and Estelle Gettie (or Granda M. from Janet Evonivitch's story) knockoff, tries to get her married off.

I did enjoy the mystery of where Hannah's cat is hiding all the food she puts out for him everyday. That was more entertaining than the so-called mystery.

On a saving note, the recipes are good....3 stars. If you like cozies, you'll love this one, although you may be getting tired of this series if you've read others. ( )

When a fitness instructor at Hannah's gym is murdered, and practically all the investigators fall under suspicion, it is up to Hannah and her friends and family to figure out who did it.

The murder doesn't actually happen until quite far into the story, and not all of the previous story is set-up for the murder itself. A lot of it is just time spent in Hannah's busy life as she bounces around making cookies, trying to lose weight to fit into a dress, decide between two beaus, and solve problems for those around her. There's a cute little mini-mystery about her cat and what happens to all his food, too. The recipes sound delicious, although most of them are just variations on a basic cookie recipe (butter, white sugar, flour, leavening agent). Even though the mystery doesn't progress very fast and the investigation of it goes forward in uneven leaps, the in-between content is enjoyable and the farther along it goes, the more one tends to like all the surrounding characters.

I listened to this as a recorded book and found the narrator to be very skilled. She makes excellent cat sounds, and in the few places where the book allows for her to do some sound effects with the dialogue instead of just reading the words, it's very enjoyable. I wish that they had given her more leeway to be able to do what the dialogue says rather than just say it. (Coughing, sneezing, etc.) She also does a good job providing different voices for the different characters, although since there are so many female characters (which is very nice) sometimes they do start to sound a little alike and there might be times where you get confused who is talking. That never lasts very long, though. A few lines later it becomes clear. The men's voices are done very well. The narrator gives the men's voice a roughing up and burring so that you know it is a male character for sure, even if you wouldn't necessarily think it was a man's voice.

As an aside, I don't know who the man is that gives the introduction and summary at the end, but he also does the bit at the beginning and end of the discs ("Cream Puff Murder Disc 1") and he's a riot as he is so forceful and serious with his minimal lines. It was the tiniest thing, but so very amusing. ( )

Let's face it, who doesn't love a lady who is always trying to help others and bakes tremendous cookies at the same time. Hannah Swensen can take anything in the cabinet and make a treat out of it. In the Cream Puff Murder, Hannah is fighting her own person hell - she needs to lose weight so that she can fit into the special dress that her mother, Dolores, ordered for her to wear at the Book Launch Party that is planned for Delores' book.
With her sister, Andrea's help, Hannah sets to exercising at the new spa Heavenly Bodies. There she runs into an old rival- Ronnie Ward. Later when she discovers Ronnie's body in the Jacuzzi, Hannah works to clear Mike (one of her beaus), Lonnie (her sister Michelle's beau), and Bill (Andrea's husband). While working on solving this mystery, Hannah had s mystery at home - Moishe, her cat, has some strange eating habits and Hannah needs to figure out how she manages to empty her kitty feeder and still stay thin. The mysteries are entertaining and fun loving. Definitely a great cozy! ( )

I love the Hannah Swenson series, and this book is one of the best. Yes, it is a cozy series, but what's wrong with that? I love the folksiness of Hannah and her family and friends. I love the great recipes in each book, and I always enjoy the mystery. They are usually smart and not as easy to figure out as some can be in this genre. In this book Hannah is trying to lose weight, and the book is set around that, her diet and her workouts at the gym in the mall. When one of the gym instructors is found dead in the jacuzzi, Hannah tries to narrow down the list of suspects in order to catch the killer. In this case there are more suspects than usual because Ronni was not a well-liked person by any means. She was far too familiar with all the men, both married and unmarried in the town of Lake Eden. I absolutely love these delightful characters and cannot wait for another new Hannah Swenson book to lose myself in. ( )