Saturday, May 9, 2015

Review: Chef Maurice and a Spot of Truffle by J.A. Lang





I received a copy of Chef Maurice and a Spot of Truffle through a giveaway from another awesome blog called A Cozy Girl Reads. This book basically has everything that I'd want out of a cozy. It's a nice, light, fun read with characters that really jump off the page and come to life and it wasn't hard at all for me to imagine myself inside the book right along with them.


It's written in UK English, so there are a few phrases that some US people may not recognize. However, I personally enjoyed that about it and I found it pretty easy to figure out what the word or saying meant, even if I had never heard it before.

Chef Maurice is a highly enjoyable character. He's basically always doing something to get himself into trouble and that's how he ends up in the middle of the murder investigation. His friend Arthur often gets dragged along for the ride and tries to keep him out of trouble, but doesn't always succeed. Some of their adventures are quite humorous and I found myself literally laughing out loud in certain parts. Patrick and PC Lucy are also great characters with very clearly defined personalities.

This book was not horribly long, but the author did an amazing job of thorough plot, character, and scenery development without having a lot of "fluff" or having to take up 400 pages, which is impressive. Another thing that I was surprised and delighted by was the fact that I truly had no idea who the murderer was until it was announced in the book. I read almost exclusively murder mysteries and a lot of the time I am able to guess whodunnit at least a bit before the characters in the book figure it out, but in this case I was truly stumped!

One last thing I found highly enjoyable was the fact that certain sections of the book are actually told from Hamilton's (a pig) point of view, which made me smile and is rarely seen in books. The cover art is really cute too.

In my review policy I state I very rarely give a 5 star review and that is true, but honestly I can't find a darn thing wrong with this book so it really doesn't deserve any less than 5 stars. Kudos J.A. Lang and I look forward to the next book!

To learn more about this author or her books, you can visit her website which is http://www.jalang.net. She's also on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/JALangAuthor. Chef Maurice and a Spot of Truffle can be purchased via iTunes, Kobo, B&N, Amazon, and/or Google Play.

1 comment:

  1. I think J.A. Lang is my new favourite author! This book was charming, funny and utterly brilliant! I could not find one thing bad to say about it. More books that you might like to try: Chef Maurice and the Rather Fishy Tale ( a short that is before Spot of Truffle), Chef Maurice and the Wrath of Grapes and the next book will be out in October. I was lucky enough to be chosen as an advance reader. I do hope you read the other books.
    Deb

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