A Caffeine Conundrum
by Angela Ruth Strong

My rating: 2.5 / 5
Genre: Mystery

When Marissa Alexander and Tandy Brandt both want to purchase the same building—Marissa to open a tea house and Tandy to open a coffee shop—the bidding war is over before it begins, due to the untimely death of the building’s owner. To make matters worse, their proximity to the death and desire to buy the building put Marissa and Tandy squarely in the crosshairs of the investigation. Local beauty queen Marissa and newcomer Tandy will have to work together to find the real killer so they can go back to vying for the building.

These ladies are not the kind of MCs I look for in a mystery story. They jump to suspecting everyone that they meet or that comes to mind in the course of the investigation, coming up with outlandish theories, making wild accusations with no particular need for evidence, and then proceeding to be terrified of whoever they’ve most recently decided must be guilty. Tandy has her issues, but she’s a lot more relatable than Marissa, who is incredibly rude to Tandy the moment they meet, is selfish and whiny, and gives a whole new meaning to the word “klutz” (seriously, how she doesn’t kill herself is beyond me). On the plus side, though these two start off at odds with each other, I do appreciate that they begin a grudging partnership that turns into friendship in a way that doesn’t feel forced.

The mystery itself left a bit to be desired for me. Because every single potential motive is beaten to death by these girls, it’s pretty clear to me that none of their suspects could be the actual killer. Which led me to suspect the one person they hadn’t turned their attention to, which turned out to be correct, though I didn’t guess the motive at all. The “murder weapon,” though, really threw me off. I tried to look up what would happen if you put instant coffee into a machine and brew it, and other than gunking up the inside of the machine, it seems to have no other negative side effects. Either the author completely made up the chemistry involved or didn’t explain what she was going for very well in the book. 

Overall, this book was not for me. It’s the beginning of a series of mysteries with these two as the main characters, which I will not be continuing. However, the reviews for this book are mostly positive, and even more so for the rest of the series. If you’re a fan of contemporary mysteries and aren’t bothered by what I mentioned above, please consider giving this book a try.

Find out more about A Caffeine Conundrum

See what I’m reading next.

If you’ve read this book, or read it in the future, feel free to let me know what you think!