About Soft Serve Sleighing
Soft Serve Sleighing (Coffee & Cream Café Mysteries)
Cozy Mystery
5th in Series
Setting – Long Island, NY
Publisher: Gemma Halliday Publishing (January 28, 2025)
Number of Pages - 226
Kindle ASIN: B0DLHPWDNT
From author Lena Gregory comes a
delightfully delicious cozy mystery...
With most of Eastern Long Island
closed down for a blizzard, Danika Delaney and her friends are holed up in her
old fashioned malt shop, the Coffee & Cream Café, with ice cream and hot
chocolate. However, their plans to wait out the storm in cozy company are
interrupted when a popular YouTuber and her two companions show up at the
door—they've been trapped by the storm, and Dani generously offers to serve
them breakfast. But her generosity isn't rewarded in kind, as the reviewer then
tries to extort money from Dani in exchange for a good review! When the storm
finally clears, Dani is happy to have seen the last of them.
Or so she thought.
Dani and her friends decide to go
sleigh riding the morning after the storm clears, but instead of a winter
wonderland, they find the extorting YouTuber...dead! To make matters worse,
Dani suddenly finds herself accused of the woman's murder. Intent on restoring
her reputation, Dani sets out to prove she didn’t do it. This is one storm
she's not sure she can weather...
About Lena Gregory
Lena Gregory
Lena grew up in a small town on the
south shore of eastern Long Island, but she recently traded in cold, damp, gray
winters for the warmth and sunshine of central Florida, where she now lives
with her husband, three kids, son-in-law, and four dogs. Her hobbies include
spending time with family, reading, and walking. Her love for writing developed
when her youngest son was born and didn’t sleep through the night. She works
full-time as a writer and a freelance editor and is a member of Sisters in
Crime.
Review
When a blackmailing TikToker meets an untimely demise in the snow, Dani Delaney is unexpectedly involved in another murder investigation.
Soft Serve Sleighing is the fifth fun entry in author Lena Gregory’s outstanding, cozy Coffee & Cream Café Mysteries, and, once again, Dani Delaney finds herself in the middle of a murder investigation. With its comfortable, familiar Long Island setting and its likable recurring cast of characters, I was quickly drawn into the latest story of murder and intrigue in the little town of Watchogue.
Dani is the series’s main character and the owner and operator of the local ice cream and coffee café, having taken the business over from her Uncle Jimmie. Now, in the dead of winter, the addition of coffee and pastries to the former “ice cream only” parlor’s offerings is starting to pay off with a clientele of regulars from the local population when a blizzard hits the town and shuts everything down. When three young women appear at the closed café, Dani feels obligated to open up just for them, even after their leader, Brynleigh Star, a TikTok influencer, unjustly bashes the local B&B where they are staying. The three proceed to order numerous items from the menu and demand tastes of all the specialty ice cream dishes, then insinuate they’ll only post a 5-star review of the café if Dani subscribes to one of their outrageously expensive memberships. When Dani fails to take the bait, they walk their check. The next day, when Dani finds the instigator dead in the snow near the B&B on the town’s favorite hill for sledding, she begins to look like suspect number one!
The plot progresses swiftly from setup to the discovery of the murder, and I didn’t want to put the book down at all as the fun amateurs followed their instincts. I appreciated how Dani has to walk a fine line between definitively clearing her name and staying on the right side of her police detective boyfriend, Jake Barlow, who wants her as far away from the case as possible. However, it was fun watching Dani, Gwen, and Eli dance around the rules and work through the clues they had, many of which had fallen into their laps via some other very talkative suspects. After four previous books in this fun series, I really felt like I knew these characters. There are some good suspects, with everyone having a bone to pick with the very unlikable victim, but the truth isn’t too obvious. It was an entertaining story all the way to the final reveal.
I recommend SOFT SERVE SLEIGHING to cozy mystery readers, especially
fans of the previous books in the series.
January 28 – Jody's
Bookish Haven – SPOTLIGHT
January 28 – Reading, Writing &
Stitch-Metic - AUTHOR GUEST POST, INDIVIDUAL GIVEAWAY
January 28 – fundinmental – SPOTLIGHT
January 29 – Socrates
Book Reviews – SPOTLIGHT
January 29 – Reading
Is My SuperPower - REVIEW
January 30 – Christy's
Cozy Corners - REVIEW, CHARACTER GUEST POST, INDIVIDUAL GIVEAWAY
January 31 – Guatemala
Paula Loves to Read – REVIEW
January 31 – Celticlady's Reviews – SPOTLIGHT
February 1 – Frugal
Freelancer - CHARACTER INTERVIEW, INDIVIDUAL GIVEAWAY
February 1 – Elizabeth
McKenna - Author – SPOTLIGHT
February 2 – Cozy Up
With Kathy – REVIEW
February 2 – FUONLYKNEW – SPOTLIGHT
February 3 – Angel's
Book Nook – AUTHOR INTERVIEW
February 3 – Read Your
Writes Book Reviews – CHARACTER GUEST POST
February 4 – Ruff
Drafts – AUTHOR GUEST POST
February 4 – Cassidy's
Bookshelves – SPOTLIGHT
February 5 – Novels
Alive – REVIEW
February 5 – Escape
With Dollycas Into A Good Book – REVIEW
February 6 – Rebecca
M. Douglass, Author – REVIEW
February 6 – Ascroft,
eh? – CHARACTER INTERVIEW
February 7 – View from
the Birdhouse – REVIEW
February 7 – StoreyBook
Reviews – SPOTLIGHT
February 8 – Maureen's
Musings – SPOTLIGHT
February 9 – Sapphyria's
Book Reviews – REVIEW
February 10 – Deal
Sharing Aunt – AUTHOR INTERVIEW
February 10 – Sarah
Can't Stop Reading Books – REVIEW
GIVEAWAY! GIVEAWAY! GIVEAWAY!
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Great review, thank you.
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for such a wonderful review! I'm so happy you enjoyed this story. :) And thank you for sharing the release of Soft Serve Sleighing!
ReplyDeleteI have enjoyed this entire series. Looking forward to many more adventures for these characters!
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