Having read a previous book in this series, I was better prepared for this book. Daisy Ellery has magical skills. She inherited them from a long line of females with magical skills. When I read the first book, it took me a bit to understand what was going on. A woman with magical skills bakes pies to kill men who abuse women. Okay, that took a little doing to wrap my mind around it. But now I know the drill.

So, having that under control, I was able to really enjoy this book. The author included a lot more information on surrounding events in this book. We got more into her love life with Noel. We spent more time with the precocious child of her co-worker, Juan. We got more cozy with her friend, Melly. And we had the scare of her
"employer" Frank's heart attack.

This book was a good read. The ending was unpredictable. The character development was nicely done. The writing was smooth and fluid. I really enjoy this series and this particular book.

Daisy is back with her found family in tow. Whether she’s making diner pies for Frank, cutie pies for customers, or murder pies for Pies Before Guys, each one gets exactly what is needed. You won’t be able to resist turning page after page until the very end.

In this book you meet Daisy and Neal and I adore both of these characters. Another book in the series and how can you not like a good Cozy Mystery.

Some parts felt rushed but after you read you understand due to character build. I hope to read more in the series and by this author. I will continue to read the series.

Thanks NetGalley for letting me read and review.

God, I have a love/hate relationship with these books.

I love the characters. I love Daisy and Noel, and I adore Daisy's diner family. Melly was a lot to take in and I wasn't a huge fan of her, but she's grown on me; despite her constant pushing and ignoring of Daisy's boundaries. The magic and world building is so cute, and I adore what we know about Daisy's family and their own magic.

I have...disliked a lot of it though. Some parts of it feel very much like forced ally ship and I dislike Daisy's point to pretty much not help anyone who is in an abusive situation with anyone who isn't a straight, white, heterosexual cis man. I understand to a certain point, but as someone who is a part of a marginalized group, it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

I do enjoy a lot of it, and I will definitely read the next book in the series! But I do dislike the almost patronizing attitude when topics of LGBT+ and other things are mentioned.

Ahhhh another amazing book by Misha Popp.
Book 3 of the pies before guys series is just as amazing and engaging as the other books.
A series that never disappoints and makes me feel like I'm inside the world.
Amazing and recommended to everyone I know.

The Last to Pie is the third book in Misha Popp's Pies Before Guys series. Daisy Ellery is a pie baker with a very unusual business model. Sure, some of her pies are baked just to be tasty. But for very specific clients Daisy's pies can be used to regain their lives by permanently removing the worst men from the world. In this book Daisy is recruited to bake a pie for a woman trying to flee her abusive cop boyfriend. Daisy has a slight hesitation due to the potential for this to be an undercover operation designed to trap her. When the woman goes missing Daisy must investigate the police. She quickly discovers he is not only abusive at home but also at work.

I absolutely love a cozy mystery. My biggest hang up usually is the way police are treated in the books. They are not intelligent enough to solve the crime. They have blinders on and are willing to convict a person just because it is the easiest answer. But in the end are way too often treated with respect and end up dating the MC. I love this series because of the more realistic view on policing. Daisy is a great main character. I love the light touch of the magic in the books. She has a very specific power and uses it to do good. I hope Misha writes a dozen more of these books. I will be first in line every time to buy!

Thank you to NetGalley and Crooked Lane Books for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I really enjoyed this book! Even though it's the third book in the series, I was glad to be able to enjoy this as a standalone. This was marketed as a cozy mystery, but I think this was more like your typical thriller read. There was magical realism, mystery, action, and intensity. All that rolled into such a sweet and intense book.

The main character Daisy can make magical pies, where she puts magical poison in them for the intended victim to well, die from eating it. But all that became the background for the story was more about Daisy and her quest (with her friend Melly's help) in saving a girl that contacted her for a pie. The magical part just sat on the sideline really throughout the book. The book moved and it kept me rooting for Daisy and Melly to succeed. The sub characters were also done well. I enjoyed that her boyfriend was hesitant about all that encompassed these murder pies, but he understood it. Her sidekick, not the other hand, was kinda annoying but I was able to get over that.

The only quirky thing I experienced was that I actually forgot the MC's name was Daisy. I think it was said like 3 times, and when it happened, I was like...wait, who? Oh yeah, the main chick. So obviously this was from a first-person point of view.

Pub date: May 21, 2024

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.

My least favourite things about cozy mysteries are usually the lack of swearing, and the fact that frequently the love interest is some form of law enforcement. The PBG series has neither of these problems, and this entry delves into why the latter is so problematic.


I'll never be a fan of the first person present tense narrative, and I do feel like some social activism topics get covered in a sort of hand-holdy way that I find off-putting. BUT this one is definitely my favourite of the series so far, and I'll continue to read them as they come out.

The Last To Pie
Written By Misha Pop
Published By Crooked Lane Books
Release Date May 21, 2024

A pies before guys cozy mystery, it is the story of Daisy Ellery who makes pies that kill guys. Daisy understands how hard it is to be a police officer and how rampant domestic violence is in their relationships. When she receives a message in her inbox she is not sure if it is from a woman who is trying to escape a relationship or a cop that is looking for info. Into her side hustle as a man killer. Now, the woman who sent the message is missing and Daisy must do what she can to find her but can she? This is a really good mystery that will keep you invested in the novel from the start.

4 out of 5 stars


Thank you to NetGalley as well as the author and publisher for giving me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for my unbiased and honest review..

Daisy Ellery has a gift for baking pies, infusing them with magic, so those eating them either realize their crimes (rarely) or die (more often). She’s set up a ‘service’ so to speak, providing pies by request to victims of domestic violence in order for them to silence their abuser. She gets an unusual request; turns out it’s the partner of a cop. Is it some sort of setup? She hesitates, then the woman disappears. Daisy knows that her disappearance won’t get solved by the cops, so she starts looking into it discovering the abuser has even more secrets.

So, a friend had recommended this series to me, making it sound sort of light, but in reality it was a lot darker than I expected and much more in the 'Thriller' category than 'Mystery.' Daisy is constantly afraid of getting caught (which didn’t make a lot of sense? Getting caught baking a magic pie?). There’s lots of domestic abuse going on in the background - a woman requests a pie to protect her and her daughter and another knows all the excuses for the hospital about what happened. And Daisy is technically a serial killer, if by pie. She does mention that there is a sort of escape in each pie, if the abuser repents, but it’s not stressed, just mentioned once. The book just wasn’t what I was expecting, and thus I didn’t enjoy it. I’m not saying it was a bad book necessarily, but If you’re expecting Barbie, and get Oppenheimer, chance are you’re not going to appreciate it.

I did enjoy the relationships between everyone - how people at the diner took care of each other, covering for each other. I’m debating about picking up an earlier book in the series knowing what to expect, see how I like it. Overall, if you’ve read early books, and appreciate the darker atmosphere, that I’d recommend it. Otherwise, I’d suggest looking for another book.

I received a copy of this from NetGalley.com that I voluntarily chose to review.

This is story about Daisy Ellery who makes pie and murder people, one day she received a mysterious call that changed her life. What i liked the most is friendship between her and molly. It's fun read but not much mysterious, overall a good and fun read

Book 3 of Misha Popp's Pie before Guys series is, for me, the strongest of the series. Daisy has to take a hard look at the ethics of what she does, and how it affects the people around her.
When a woman who has reached out to her goes missing before her pie can be delivered, Daisy knows something is very wrong. With very little to go on, and the potential of putting people she loves at major risk, how can Daisy put things right?

If you haven't read a Pies before Guys mystery, I would suggest going back to Magic, Lies and Deadly Pies which was a solid kick-off to the series. Daisy has the magical ability to bake delicious pies that will cause you no harm if you are a good human, but will kill you if you are an unrepentant abuser of women. As you might imagine, that comes with some ethical dilemmas. The great thing about this third book is that Popp genuinely lets her characters wrestle with all of this. Daisy's amazing, adorable boyfriend Noel knows what she does and knows that she isn't going to stop doing it. How he wraps his head around this is a really well captured part of the book.

There's a ton going on here. Melly, the best friend biker goddess, who occasionally strikes sparks with Daisy is back, using her fabulous research skills to help Daisy track down a deeply flawed cop, who may have made the woman in his life disappear. She might be the character sitting on Daisy's one shoulder, as Noel sits on the other. One thing that I appreciate about this series is that it does not shy away from hard conversations. I stayed up late to finish this one one night, and there is a very hard and surprising conversation that comes late in this book. There were some tears for me, because Popp makes her characters live in a universe that is not black and white, despite this ostensibly being a cozy.

Lots of excitement to keep you reading here, and the usual crew at the diner are back, which for me made this work better than the second instalment in the series.
4.5 stars from me. Thanks to NetGalley and CrookedLane books for the e-arc.

The third of its kind, this "Pies Before Guys" Mystery, this will have you hooked from the very beginning.
Daisy knows her pies as well as she knows guys. However, this time around....Daisy isn't quite sure how to handle the request that lands in her inbox. She is trying to decide if she can actually trust what the letter entails or if someone is trying to catch Daisy in her "side hustle" gig.
I absolutely love murder mysteries and baking thrown in the mix as well, so reading this was super fun for me! I don't feel like you need to read the other two books before this in order to understand what is going on. Even though this is fiction, it makes me want to have a special pie just for myself.

Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for selecting me to be able to read this ARC! Hoping to read even more in the future.

🥧BOOK REVIEW🥧

The Last to Pie - Misha Popp
Rating: 5/5 ⭐️

“Daisy Ellery is back to doing what she does best: making pies and killing guys. And it’s about to get more dangerous than ever. Daisy knows the statistic–domestic violence perpetrated by cops is rampant. It was only a matter of time before she was called in to help. But when this request arrives in her inbox, it isn’t accompanied by the required referral and that makes Daisy nervous. Is this really a woman trapped in a violent relationship, or is it a shady cop trying to uncover Daisy’s murdery side hustle?

Daisy hesitates to accept the job–until the woman who left the request goes missing and it’s clear her boyfriend is responsible. Knowing his work buddies won’t be any help investigating, Daisy sets out to find the woman and plans a little justice of her own. When Daisy finds evidence that the boyfriend wasn’t just a monster in private, but corrupt at work too, things get even more perilous.

Feeling guilty that she hesitated to help the woman, Daisy is determined to find her and get her justice–whatever it takes.”

I loved this whole series! Sign me up all day for bad ass women taking on bad men with magic pies! This one was a bit darker than the other two - I appreciated the conversation and commentary around domestic violence and law enforcement. The friendships in this series are some of my absolute favorites - especially Frank, Juan and Melly. I honestly want about 10 more books about Daisy!

You could read this as a stand alone but I HIGHLY recommend the whole series! 🍰

Recommend if you like:
- Magical realism
- Cozy mystery series
- Magical murder pies
- Found family
- Baking references (and real pie recipes!)
- Dark humor

Thank you to @crookedlanebooks, @mishapopp_ and @netgalley for my copy!

Daisy Ellery is a pie baker. She runs a pie food truck called The Pie Girl. What not everyone knows is she also bakes murder pies. Daisy has magic, and she uses it to make pies for guys who are abusive and need to be stopped.
When she receives a request from a local woman whose boyfriend is a cop, she hesitates, because this could be trouble. But in her hesitation, the woman goes missing, and now Daisy needs to help her before it's too late.
I enjoyed this book. I haven't read the start of the series, but it was easy to jump into the storyline. The concept was pretty unique to me, which I also enjoyed - murder by pie?! This was a fun and quick story to get through!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest opinion.

I love murder magical baking so much 😭😍

As a queer baker I love books about baking and this book is so so so well done in that regard. It's written by a fellow baker, hell a fellow ace baker and that warms my heart.

I don't read digital books that are not easily digestible romances very often and it should be noted that I read the entirety of this book as an e-book and didn't wait for the audiobook. That's how good it is. I was so excited for this one and it caught me at the right time and I was sucked in. Any spare second I had I was catching up a little bit and I really liked this one.

I didn't do a reread of the first two books before I started this one and maybe I should have because I honestly don't even remember the romance happening but it's fine.

I don't want to give too many details away because this is the third book in a series and I definitely recommend that you read all three books. It's essentially about Daisy who is a pie baker and she has magic. Her magic has been passed down through the women in her family and they've all used it in very subtle friendly ways. Her grandma used it when she made clothing to make women feel more comfortable with themselves and her mom used it as a hair stylist but Daisy uses her magic a little differently. She does bake pies for the diner and for her pie food truck that are infused with friendly feelings and good luck and happiness but she also runs a side business where women who are in abusive or dangerous situations can write in and request a murder pie. Daisy bakes magic into the pie that makes the abuser want to stop doing the bad things that they're doing and often that means death. So she bakes murder pies. It's kind of awesome to be completely honest. If you made it to book three I would assume that you're on board with this but if you look at reviews from book one people are upset. I think that they need to pull the stick out of their butt and realize that sometimes murder magic is the way to go.

So in book one we see Daisy develop her relationships with her friends and the diner and she gets blackmailed essentially. Book two we see Daisy compete on a baking TV show where there's a murder mystery set in the baking competition. And now in book 3 we see Daisy get a request from a woman who doesn't really follow all of the procedures and the abuser in question is a cop. There's a lot of discussion about abuse and law enforcement and domestic violence and police misconduct. We also get more of a look into Daisy's relationship with her boyfriend and her relationship when the one of her best friends. Her pitbull Zoe continues to make an appearance and be adorable and we get to see more of Daisy's relationships with all of the diner staff.

This book kept me on the edge of my seat and I was worried for them the whole time. It does wrap up just a little bit too cleanly for me and I would have liked to see it drawn out of it but as a whole I really liked this one and I get so much joy out of seeing Daisy really grow and blossom up into someone who is comfortable with her own wants and desires in relationships and see her learn that she is deserving of found family and love and happiness.

Daisy is known as The Pie Girl, she runs a mobile catering business that occasionally -and very secretly- provides a "special" service to abused women only. She helps them break free from their abusers by way of deadly pies that she carefully crafts with her magical powers. When one of Daisy's special clients goes missing, Daisy sets out to find the woman before it’s too late -"if" it isn't too late already.

This is the third book in the "Pies Before Guys" series. My review might be biased because I haven't read the first two books. At the end of the day, it only reflects my own experience with this book ... Which was underwhelming, a bit disappointing even.

- An issue with the whole concept : I feel like the author really wants us to like Daisy, despite the fact that she's a serial killer. And she (the author) spends a lot of time trying to convince us that her main character's actions are justifiable ... What she does is actually not okay, and no amount of justification (and there's a lot of it in this book, paragraphs and paragraphs) will change that. I would've been more comfortable with, and would have rooted for, a morally grey character.

- CERS (Compulsive Eye-Roll Syndrom) inducing monologues : I get that some (if not most) writers want their books to reflect their own beliefs. But choose your battles, chill out, keep the sanctimonious talk for the right instances. Daisy's supposed to be some sort of super-woke lady who can’t tolerate any form of injustice, but her constant comments are tiresome - especially because they're often randomly thrown around, even when it's not very relevant for the story.
Example : In this paragraph, Daisy was wondering if her client drove a car and how much independance her alleged abuser gave her : "I wonder about regular trips, the grocery running around that so often falls to women in straight relationships." Why mention the gender-based distribution of duties here ? Is it relevant ?
Another example, when Daisy has been randomly pulled over by a police officer : "I'm thankful to be
driving off not only without a ticket
but without harassment, and I am
fully aware of how lucky that is. Had I been Black or if Zoe [dog] had been anything less than perfectly friendly, all of this could've gone very wrong." This one just made me uncomfortable.

- The story was very slow paced, not in a good way with interesting developments, there were a lot of un-interesting monologues and dialogues between Daisy and her friends that had nothing to do with the actual mystery. I might have felt differently about it if I had read the first and the second books. But here, I just couldn't care less about them, it just seemed to me that there were parts of the book where nothing happened.

Fun fact : I was halfway through the book when I realized that I didn't know the main character's name. Well there's a reason for that, it was only mentioned TWICE in the whole book ! TWICE !

Thank you NetGalley and Crooked Lane for giving me access to this e-ARC for review consideration. All opinions are my own.

A lot of times I'm usually not very impressed with a series but with these I couldn't put them down. I loved that this 3rd one you may not have needed to read the first two but appreciated the bits of back story from the others. In this story, Daisy gets herself mixed in with the local police that leads her and Melly in a dangerous cat and mouse game.

This book felt a little slightly darker than the others which I liked

I enjoyed this read a lot! The cover absolutely caught my attention and I’ll be recommending this read to several of my friends!

This book kept me engaged the whole time. I don’t typically read this genre of book but the description and the cover drew me straight in. I enjoyed it and had a hard time putting it down!! Can’t wait to read more by the author.