Fondue or Die by Korina Moss

Available: October 22, 2024

Rating: 5 cheese wedges

Dairy Days Festival is in full swing and several of Team Cheese are involved in the controversial Miss Dairy Pageant (a scholarship competition, of course). When the Pageant director gets bumped off the list of people who might have wanted her dead could stretch from one end of the pasture to the other. Unfortunately the director's death isn't the only mystery surrounding the festival. The nearby museum has seen more than one devastating fire and there's the matter of the police chief's wife, who's been missing for over a decade.

There was so much going on in this book - but in a good way! Sometimes if there's too much going on I have a hard time keeping track of all the characters and subplots, but that was not the case here. Since everything was so interwoven it was not at all difficult to follow the threads and it made for a quick, un-put-downable read.

We see lots of our favorite characters, Archie is being a good sport and helping out with the pageant even though it requires him to kind of embarrass himself, Mrs. Schultz is doing her best to keep the pageant humming along despite all the things that are going wrong each step of the way, Baz is helping out at the booth and acting as Willa's trusty sidekick throughout the investigation, and of course Willa is doing her thing and eating her cheese. Heath makes a comeback and since he's out of his jurisdiction he's playing the role of amateur sleuth right alongside Willa. We also meet a new character, who I think we'll be seeing more of, and she's super sweet.

The suspects in this book are many and they all have some truly killer motives, though nothing really compares to the backstory of the pageant front-runner. You just have to read it to find out!

Thank you to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC.