My 2 star review of
Up to No Gouda, by Linda Reilly :-
Spoiler:
Fiction hurts. This is a book that would have, in the past, earned rave reviews from me, along with a 4 star rating. I felt like I have been teleported from the frying pan into the fire. Up to No Gouda has a cat loving author feed mice to a snake, and feed cheese to a dog, who was thence named after that cheese; Havarti. Talk about mixed messages. The mystery is kind of clever because it lets you solve itself. I have seen a few of the details of the book in other and better ones. All of the imperfections in this cozy make Jack a very dull boy.
The book simply was almost always lacking when it came to actually reading it. Those readers who are also of a mature age and who are fans of the author will undoubtedly tell a different story. There are all the ingredients, those familiar ones, the same tired old ones, that will be a type of Bat signal to the regulars of the genre. The clever part of the book is making two different storylines run into a single book. Christie used to do several of them in one go, Kate Collins has done it, another favourite in Livia J. Washburn has done it. Heck, even Linda Reilly has done it many times before. However good the idea though, it loses impact gradually depending on how servilely it has been used. And how often too. Remember those knock knock jokes? Some of them are very good and the best ones are the latest ones. The writer here has not written something that has impact.
The groaningly sordid romance element was so lame. I think Reilly left the romance bits (and they are bits) to be written last of all. It seemed such a chore to read and this aspect was the laziest in the book. What was increasingly worrying is that how two tropes of the romance genre seemed to have become a hybrid in this tale. First the MC was very much an introvert. Secondly, there was a love interest that seemed decently friendly, with nary a message aimed at the MC. Ari, the guy in question, seemed to fancy the MC and he does nothing of note. He was too old to be playing both the jock and the shy guy. Not only that, but Carly obviously fancies the hunk. It is also insta love. She flushes whenever she interacts with Ari. So they both like each other and they know that. Why aren't they being bedfellows?
There is more. Carly so far does not have guilt from losing the love of her life, Daniel. The latter was a guy who makes it a mystery of its own as to how special this union was. From what Carly was feeling, you have the impression that this is a match of soulmates. But nope, there is no hint, and neither a case of show nor tell in the flashbacks. The character Becca, who is another stock character, is barely in this book. Also was this not part of the premise of The Inn at Holiday Bay series?
This book was always going to be full of clichés. All it requires to engage the type of reader that is no longer a fan of the genre is, to seem human and not like the output of an automat. We know why books like this exist. They exist because many - not all - readers have tried and failed to read Dickens, Watts, Camus, and have felt their comfort zone settle in drivel like this and other 'guilty' pleasures. If cozies are not bringing home the bacon then there are other alternatives without breaking open the spine of the In The Search of Lost Time series. I wanted to write more but I'd rather read more, not of the same. Stay away from the ironically named Up to No Gouda.