The Tainted Taffy

by Fiona Grace

Auf der charmanten, historischen Insel Magnolia Bay führt Autumn Ray eine Frühstückspension und genießt einen anderen Lebensrhythmus. Doch ob es ihr gefällt oder nicht, Autumn muss in die Rolle der Detektivin schlüpfen, um nicht nur ihren Ruf, sondern auch ihr Zuhause zu verteidigen.

Der Sommer bringt nicht nur Touristen nach Magnolia Bay, sondern auch ein düsteres Geheimnis, als Gift die Sandstrände verseucht. Autumn Ray muss ihre beschauliche Routine gegen Detektivarbeit eintauschen, als sie in die Aufklärung des Mordes an einem beliebten örtlichen Konditor hineingezogen wird. Wird ihr Spürsinn süß genug sein, um einen Mörder zu überführen? Oder wird sie die bitteren Folgen einer von Misstrauen zerrissenen Gemeinschaft zu spüren bekommen?

VERGIFTETER TOFFEE ist der Auftakt einer spannenden neuen Krimiserie von Fiona Grace, der Bestsellerautorin von “Mord im Herrenhaus”, das über 10.000 Fünf-Sterne-Bewertungen erhalten hat!
Die Magnolia Bay Krimi-Reihe bietet ein fesselndes und entzückendes Cozy-Krimi-Erlebnis, das Sie in eine idyllische Landschaft entführt, voller Witz, romantischer Momente und unerwarteter Wendungen. Machen Sie sich bereit, sich in eine bezaubernde neue Heldin zu verlieben, die sicher zu einem Publikumsliebling werden wird.
Weitere Bücher der Reihe erscheinen in Kürze!
„Äußerst unterhaltsam. Ich empfehle dieses Buch jedem Leser, der einen gut geschriebenen Krimi mit einigen Wendungen und einer cleveren Handlung zu schätzen weiß. Sie werden nicht enttäuscht sein. Eine hervorragende Möglichkeit, ein kühles Wochenende zu verbringen!”
– Books and Movie Reviews, Roberto Mattos (über “Mord im Herrenhaus”)
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
„Die Geschichte drehte sich nicht nur um den Täter, sondern erzählte auch von ihrem Leben und ihrer Romanze, einschließlich des Dorflebens. Sehr unterhaltsam.”
– Amazon-Rezensent (über “Mord im Herrenhaus”)
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
„Es hat liebenswerte und manchmal schrullige Charaktere, eine fesselnde Handlung und die richtige Prise Romantik. Ich kann es kaum erwarten, mit dem zweiten Buch zu beginnen!”
– Amazon-Rezensent (über “Mord im Herrenhaus”)
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
„Was für eine großartige Geschichte über Mord, Romantik, Neuanfänge, Liebe, Freundschaften und eine wunderbare Kette von Rätseln.”
– Amazon-Rezensent (über “Mord im Herrenhaus”)
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
„Dies ist ein sauberer zeitgenössischer Liebesroman, den man einfach nicht aus der Hand legen kann!”
– Amazon-Rezensent (über “Für immer, ewig”)
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
„Ein Hauch von Romantik und eine sehr entschlossene Frau! Ich habe viele Romane von Fiona Grace gelesen und jeden einzelnen davon geliebt – dieser war keine Ausnahme. Ich freue mich darauf, den Rest dieser neuen Serie zu lesen!”
– Amazon-Rezensent (über “Immer mit dir”)
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Genres: Mystery, Cozy Mystery, Ebooks, Mystery Thriller, Fiction, Audiobook, Thriller

198 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 21, 2024

About the author

Debut author Fiona Grace is author of the LACEY DOYLE COZY MYSTERY series which includes MURDER IN THE MANOR (Book #1), DEATH AND A DOG (Book #2) and CRIME IN THE CAFE (Book #3). Fiona would love to hear from you, so please visit www.fionagraceauthor.com to receive free ebooks, hear the latest news, and stay in touch.

Reviews

[Carol]

It’s probably best if I don’t give this book a star rating but here I go giving it a 1 star anyway. Summary: it wasn’t great.

I usually love cozy mysteries but this one needs a ton of work. The characters are literal adults who all act mostly like middle or high schoolers. A grown woman over 30 years old (possibly over 40 or even 50!) used “she started it” as a way to defend herself about having an argument and later in the story started a cat fight. A whole ass police officer took two inexperienced 20-something civilians into an interview of a suspected murderer and let one of them conduct half of it. What is this?? At least pretend to be writing this book for adults instead of children.

Besides all that, the characters are 1-dimensional, the writing is pretty bad, especially when it comes to conversations, and there are errors everywhere like a tech being referred to as both he and she within a few sentences and a character having two different names in the same paragraph. I’m glad this book was free in the kindle store but I’ll never get back the hours of my life spent reading it.

[Rachel A Library Fairy]

A fun, quick little cozy mystery! I enjoyed this overall. The part with the parrot 🦜 made me LOL 😂 Definitely was a solid mystery but needed much more development for me personally! More quirky side characters 🙏🏻
It did feel somewhat predictable though & there were some subjects discussed that I didn’t love (focus on dieting, getting to a goal weight etc, not exactly cozy 😣). I CANNOT recommend the audiobook. Please 😂 don’t get the audio, the narrator is a “synthesized voice”. It was so bad 😂😭

[Emmalynn]

2.7 stars. Quick read but it was ehhh

[Marylyn]

2.5

[Alayne]

3 and a half stars. I found this story to be slow, and annoying in that despite the main character being warned off by the police 3 times, she just went ahead and continued her questioning of people. Also, the police were not interested in anything she had found out, so that was doubly annoying. I just didn't find it realistic.

[Esme]

Audiobook was really bad but the story itself was okay.

[Kelly (the book hussy)]

Shortish cozy mystery.
Writing was ok
Character were just ok.

[Terry]

Good cozy mystery read.

[Reem Eisa]

I needed this cozy mystery after the two heavy books I just read, it’s fun, uncomplicated and easy to read. Autumn and her sister race to solve the death of one of the shop owners.
They go about interviewing suspects and connecting with Ex’s and annoying the police and others as you do.
At the end, the reason as always was greed and it took a while to get to the killer, but as I said it was a fun read.

[Sara Della Vecchia]

Un cozy mistery carino e scorrevole, ho apprezzato l’ambientazione e le descrizioni dell’isola che mi hanno un po’ ricordato quelle de “La signora in giallo “ (motivo per cui ho scelto questo libro).
Non ho invece apprezzato la troppa semplicità nell’ideazione del mistero (si capisce presto chi sia l’assassino) e soprattutto la traduzione italiana tragica che onestamente sembra fatta con Google Traduttore. Tra gli esempi più assurdi che mi vengo in mente c’è “call at a bad time” che è stato tradotto in “chiamata mal tempestrata (???)” e l’espressione “rendere l’aria blu”che in italiano non si usa ma è stata tradotta letteralmente quando invece andava adattata.

Comunque, nonostante la trama semplicistica non è il giallo peggiore che abbia mai letto e la componente “cozy” è stata rispettata. Tre stelle.

[Lise]

Magnolia Bay is home to Autumn Ray's B&B. The paradisal island welcomes summer tourists who bring in much-needed revenue for the year-round residents. When the candy store owner is murdered, panic sets in, and visitors begin to leave Magnolia Bay in droves. Autumn, determined to protect her home at all costs, takes on the mantle of detective and investigates the crime.

This book introduces the Magnolia Bay Mystery series. A slow pace unveils the mystery and the main characters make themselves known. I wasn't crazy about the main character, who didn't click with me. However, the read was decent, and I liked the resolution to the mystery. I'll probably pick up the next in the series in time.

[Ainee Beland]

What did I like about this reading?
I did not like this reading at first because it was very slow. Once the death of the sweet shop owner was discovered, there seemed to be nothing else but for Autumn to try and discover who the culprit (s) are and to have them arrested.

I liked Autumn, as she was good at making people feel at ease around her because she was a person whom other people loved chatting to.
The isle was one where others walked or pedaled or caught a horse-drawn buggy to get around. There’s not a sound to be heard, as far as traffic is concerned, all that’s to be heard is the clip-clop of hooves. There were only a few cars allowed on Magnolia Bay: the ambulance, the police car, and the island’s refuse collection and maintenance vehicles. Apart from those, nothing was allowed; even the mail and parcels were delivered by horse and buggy, they had two “post ponies” at their disposal—part Hackney carriage horse and part something calmer and steadier.

Okay, what I enjoyed about this book came nearly at the end; some chapters before…imagine needing to plant a camera at the home of the decease and you phone the new veterinarian in town hoping he might want to go for a late night walk around the isle but when you phone him, he has other plans with some historical society women. So you phone the next best thing, your ex-boyfriend, who, after explaining what you wish to do, thinks he is speaking to someone who sounds like her but is not her…because I don’t know what is going on Earth is going on here. You’re planting cameras in people’s houses? Well, Autumn would like help from her ex-boyfriend to plant this camera at one of the entrances to the house to capture the culprit as they’re entering to go and steal the recipe (s) from the late sweet shop owner.
Her ex-boyfriend does show up, and she convinces him to do just that, yet as they were trying to secure the camera up high in a tree or such, Autumn notices that there was someone already inside the house, trying to figure out what to do. They both decided to get the guy, they climbed through a window to enter the house, and by the time they entered, it seemed that the guy was heading for the front door to leave and so they began to chase after him out back until they caught up to him and made him stop running. Turns out that the guy wanted a recipe for his wife, but he was not the killer; he was an accountant with an alibi for the time of the murder. Laugh-out-loud-funny; hilarious uproar with her ex-boyfriend, who just drops what he is doing to help her.

All in all, this was good reading, very slow, and at times, Autumn was a bit boring and self-involved, while her sister Willow was a great help and self-absorbed. Yet they both lived on this island, with only walking or biking as a means to get to and from. This was an island where everything was possible and within reach or at one’s fingertips; or ask, and all is granted to thee.

[Scott]

I read a lot of mysteries from cozy mystery on up to some good thrillers. This didn't fit any of those. It was not very well put together. Not a lot of thought. Went in too editing or making a cohesive story. Our main protagonist was tremendously annoying. I guess she was actually fine until she tried playing detective. And she was so bad at it and ruining things so bad. There's no way in any reality this would have ever gotten her out of trouble. She was definitely creating problems for the police and investigation and would not be forgiven for it.
Some of this even could have been overlooked, but my biggest complaint was the narrator for the audio. Her voice was actually pleasant to listen to. The problem was is her voice sounded about the same. Trying to figure out at times who was talking was really tough. But even that it totally sounded robotic. Every sentence was choppy and chopped and void of emotion entirely. Things were misread. That should have been straight forward and turned out horrible. I don't believe I would continue in this series. Thank even though many of the pieces could have been tolerable if just a better editor. Got a hold of it ahead of time and a different narrator

[Jenny]

The Tainted Taffy is book one in the A Magnolia Bay Mystery series by Fiona Grace. Autumn Ray runs her bed-and-breakfast on the isle of Magnolia Bay and was happy with the quiet life until murder came to the island. With the death of the local confectioner, Autumn Ray must step up to find the killer to allow Magnolia Bay to get back to normal. Readers will continue to follow Autumn Ray's investigation to discover what happens.

The Tainted Taffy is an excellent cozy mystery that I engaged with from the first page. This is the first book I've read by Fiona Grace, and I will read another in this series. I engaged with this book from the first page and continued to the end.

I enjoy the way Fiona Grace portrays his characters and their interactions throughout this book. The Tainted Taffy is well written and researched by Fiona Grace. I like Fiona Grace's descriptions of the settings in The Tainted Taffy, which let me imagine being part of the book's plot.

I recommend this book.

[Marian Greco]

another cozy story

sanitized. always. it must be contractual. hot chocolate and blueberry muffins. iced tea and lemonade. take it to the bank there will be something blueberry and someone who.likes to cook. when the dead body is discovered, it was dead already when it was found and no real violence described. blood and guts fan i am not, well, not much of one. but I do like the taste of realism and believable characters. the most believable character in this tale was Max, the dog. oh yeah, that's the other very predictable cozy mystery fixture: there will be some kind of four footed pet in almost every scene. why do I read them? they're free and plentiful. but right now, I'm heading to James Patterson or Jeffery weaver. five stars for sure.

[Elsie Morningstar]

It didn't take me long to suspect the narrator was AI generated. It lacked the heart and soul that makes an audiobook great.

After a few mispronounced words I verified it was, in fact, AI (called "synthesized") and DNFed it at about 16%. It wasn't just the narrator that lacked heart and soul - the book was feeling flat enough that I wasn't going to seek it out in printed form.

But beyond that, I'd rather not support AI works as there are so many fantastic narrators out there whose livelihood comes from narrating books.

The more we normalize AI narration, the more it will happen, and I'd much rather keep the money in the hands of the working class!

[Rachel]

The synthesized narrator was so bad, but at least disclosed so I knew up front it wouldn’t be stellar. I suspect that it was also written by AI, or ‘helped’ by AI. At first I thought maybe it was originally written in another language and poorly translated, as a word would be used that didn’t quite make sense in context. But then did some googling and there are some interesting articles on this topic, with various author pseudonyms with similar names, same agent, and too many books for a human to have written alone. If people want to read AI books, great, but it should at least be disclosed so we have the choice. AI or not, this book was really boring and hard to get through.

[KMDL]

Terrible. I couldn't finish it. First I got the audiobook and the reader was awful, so I returned that and downloaded the ebook hoping that it would be better. Nope.

The main character, Autumn, finds the dead body of the sweet shop owner in town and jumps to the conclusion that her sister Willow killed him, just because he said something harsh to her that morning.

Willow jumps to the conclusion that Autumn killed him because she took offense to what he said to Willow. What kind of family is this?

I honestly couldn't get any further than that.

[Zee]

What I found interesting and somewhat comical was that this story took place on an island where you had to bike, hike, or buggy your way around, except for the single policeman who had a motorized vehicle (and maybe someone else, the coroner perhaps? Not sure anymore.) The plot had me thinking who had done the crime and I had actually come up with a different angle than what it actually was. The title of The Tainted Taffy is a bit confusing as it didn’t seem to fit this story.
I am still a huge Fiona Grace fan.

[Linda]

The Tainted Taffy mystery takes place in Magnolia Bay on Lake Michigan. Twenty-seven year old Autumn Ray runs the Harbor View bed and breakfast, which she inherited after her parents died in a car crash. Her sister runs a store close by called Odds and Ends. When Autumn discovers Mr. Harold Sweetly, owner of Sweetly's Treats, has been poisoned to death, she feels forced to figure out who killed him. Tourists are leaving because they don't feel safe! This is a simple cozy mystery that is a quick read.

[Natelle]

Autumn Ray enjoys running her tiny little bed and breakfast on her little island. Then murder happens and threatens to empty her rented rooms and send visitors fleeing to the mainland. Despite warnings to stop asking questions and distracting personal events, she can’t help but feel she needs solve this before island commerce suffers beyond the point of repair.

An interesting little cozy mystery complete with dog. A few scenes tugged too hard at the edges of believability, but I was still amused.

[Suzan]

I have read other Fiona Grace books and enjoyed them. This series not so much. Autumn Ray comes across as a rebellious teen who will not listen to authority but is a grown woman. I think the bones of this series are good. Autumn and her sister have a good relationship and I can see that leading to more investigations. I also loved Magnolia Bay and think it is a fun setting for a cozy mystery series.

[Kathy Cohen]

Amateur Sleuth at it Again

Another small town mystery! A murder to solve. Autumn the owner of the bed and breakfast, needs to find out who murdered the owner of the Sweet Shop. Guests are leaving the island for fear of being poisoned or killed. Mr. Sweetly was murdered by eating a poisoned ham sandwich. Who did it and why. Autumn sets out to find out what the police can’t. Enjoy!

[Chili Diane Evance]

Who killed the maker of fine sweets in town?

This story was perfect for an amateur sleuth. All Autumn wanted to do was help find a killer before there quaint town was empty of tourists that were scared to stay. Autumn had had her guests at the B and B she owned slowly check out early. Was she going to lose all her summer business? Not if she could help it.

[Larry]

I have read at least two other series by this author and pleased with both of them, so I tried this one. The characters are interesting, the backdrop of an island in one of the Great Lakes (Lake Michigan I think) is quite appealing, and the plot is easily followed. The premise is finding out who killed the surprisingly mean candy seller and why. The answers were sad. I do recommend this story.

[Sharon Binter]

Fast Read

This book was an easy read because you could envision the characters and why they had to solve the murder quickly! I've been in many towns that could have been affected by a murder such as described in the sweet shop! Fiona Grace has an ability to describe both her characters and their environments as related to why they acted the way they did!

[Andree]

Probably should have DNF'd. This is fine as a cozy mystery, of a bit slight. Mostly, I didn't really get on with the writing style, which felt a bit off. For example, none of the dialogue felt like how people talk. Just didn't read quite right. May be just me, but this was another kobo book that didn't quite work.

[Cindy Stalvey]

I listened to the audio book version and to be honest it could have been better. They used a “synthesized voice” as the reader and it was off putting. The cadence was wrong and there were weird mispronunciations and random extra sounds. All of that made it really hard to get immersed into the story.

[Heather Lewis]

I listened to this book. It's a strong no for me. The story didn't flow well, and the dialogue was weak. I appreciate how they didn't delve too much into the potential romance. The ending was a bit of a let down. Also, the audio book was oddly done. Almost every chapter had at least ten glitches, and the narrator would randomly change her voice for certain characters. It made no sense.

[Lea]

Audiobook on Hoopla - Small vacation town in Michigan starts off quickly with the murder. There’s something I didn’t like about the writing that I have a hard time putting my finger on. I think it’s the forced dialogue, it doesn’t flow sometimes and that isn’t how people talk to each other. It was distracting.
I would read the others in the series because I like the location and the plot.