A poetry slam at the bakery leads to accusations of plagiarism and murder. Val and Charlene decide to investigate Professor Michael Starke’s death.

Detective Gordon Carmichael, Val’s boyfriend, risks being kicked off the murder investigation due to Val’s interfering.

I love the crazy characters, the writing and the story. At times I felt Charlene was over the top and took too many risks. Val may have to rethink her friendship with Charlene. Safety is a major concern for the main characters.

I look forward to the next installment.

Pies Before Guys is an entertaining cosy mystery with several quirky characters. The plot is engaging and I loved the setting. I've read one of the other books in this series and this one didn't disappoint.

This is an entertaining, well written cozy. The setting is great and the characters are quirky. I would definitely recommend reading this series from the beginning since this is book 4.

Thank you to Kensington Books for giving me a digital galley of this book in exchange for feedback.

I've been looking forward to "Pies before Guys," because I've already read and enjoyed the previous books in Kirsten Weiss's "Pie Town" series. What I like about these books is that they're a little more youthful than most cozy mysteries. The stereotype is that cozy mysteries are written by and for old women, and I'm fine with that - no one enjoys watching an elderly nun and her cat solve a crime more than I do. But Weiss's "Pie Town" series is cozy mystery for millennials, and I am finding that I really enjoy the slightly-edgy-for-a-cozy-but-still-pretty-cozy tone of them.

In this volume, Val is hosting a poetry reading at Pie Town, facilitated in part by employee Abril, who is excited that her professor will be reading his poems there. The poetry is painfully bad, but when the professor is murdered just after the reading, the problem of bad poetry seems a little insignificant. Should Val investigate? Or should she leave it to her handsome boyfriend the detective, and keep her eyes on her pies? Not related to murder, is it really a good idea for Charlene to start a UFO hoax on YouTube involving branded pie plates?

I found that it took me a little time to get into this one, but by the time Val was digging in the Dumpster for a discarded and possibly important bad poem, I was all in for the Pie Town gang and the solution to the mystery.

Bonus points for included pie recipes, which I almost certainly won't actually cook but still enjoy seeing.

It's a bird, it's a plane, it's a pie tin UFO! Charlene is a social media genius or a social media madwoman depending on who you ask. Oh but that is not all that Charlene and Val are up to, nope there is, of course, the usual mayhem this time it is in the form of a poetry slam hosted by Pie Town and Abril featuring various Lit department professors which results in a poet sliced. Sliced by his own saber, Professor Michael Starke is no more. Apparently, he was no more a professor, no more a poet, and no more a gentleman since he had a new female TA every year. So who done it? Was it a heart-broken TA, his ex-wife, her current boyfriend who was also a member of the Lit department, could it have been Abril? Of course, it can't be Abril and not just because Val's brother has a bit of a crush and wants Val to do her thing and keep Abril off the cops radar. Speaking of cops...Hunky Detective Gordon Charmichael, Val is convinced that they are in a honeymoon phase and he is looking at her with rose-colored glasses. because he isn't against the Baker Street Bakers meddling/investigating as much as usual. Great next story for this cast, I still can't complete visualize Val's little house but I am glad that she has one. The story was excellent and the red herrings were perfectly served up to keep one guessing as to the outcome. I was even guessing about Val and Gordon but was sure that it would all work out in the end. Cannot wait to make the apple pie recipe with a slight twist, I will be making hand pies.

Description
Val’s crime-solving club digs into a piping hot new case! A poetry slam at a bakery? Why not! Even though Pie Town proprietor Val Harris would rather be spending time with her newfound half-brother, she knows her employee Abril is beyond excited to be hosting the event. Especially since it stars the apple pie of Abril’s eye, poet and professor Michael Starke. But the evening ends on a sour note when Professor Starke is found murdered mere moments after being accused of plagiarism. Just like that, Pie Town is at the center of another criminal inquiry. At Abril’s request—and much to Detective Carmichael’s consternation—Val and Charlene decide to investigate Starke’s death. But the case is as tough as an overworked crust and the Baker Street Bakers are only coming up with scraps. If they don’t pinch the cultured killer soon, Pie Town’s reputation could crumble.

My Review
Pies Before Guys if the 4th installment in the A Pie Town Mystery Series. The characters are well written and it's definitely a quite enjoyable cozy mystery. Val Harris is hot on the trail to solve the brutal murder. Will she succeed?

Follow Val as she tries to figure out who murdered Professor Stark with a saber.

This ARC was provided to me in exchange for my honest opinion, thank you Kensington Books and Netgalley.

I give this a solid 5 star.

A well written and fun to read cozy mystery that made me smile and kept me guessing.
The story flows without any hiccup, the cast of characters is fleshed out, and the mystery is solid.
Can't wait to read the next installment.
Recommended.
Many thanks to Kensington Books and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine.

An entertaining and well written cozy mystery. Great plot and quirky characters. I received an arc from the publisher and this is my unbiased review.

When a brutal murder takes place close to family restaurant Pie Town, restaurant owner Val Harris sets out to solve the case in her amateur-sleuthing way, which gets her in serious danger.

English professor Michael Stark is invited to Pie Town for a poetry reading event. He chooses to read a rather strange poem, which gets him into a heated argument with another member of the local college English department. He is accused of plagiarism. Soon after he is found dead, stabbed with a saber.

Worried about the reputation of the restaurant, Val finds it crucial to solve the case. Her boyfriend, Detective Gordon Carmichael, risks being kicked off the murder investigation for the third time because of Val’s interfering. He makes her promise to keep all talk about the case to Pie Town. Charlene and Val invent new and creative ways around that promise. She tries to make sure her business isn’t in jeopardy being connected to a murder case again.

I like Val Harris. She seems a sweet, sensible girl who is building a successful pie business. She may come across as somewhat of a pushover at times, but for the most part she seems to find it important to keep her promises and be reliable. But being close friends with Charlene, she is sometimes “forced” to color outside the lines a bit, which gets her into trouble with her local police detective boyfriend.

Charlene McCree is the main supporting character who adds a funny and interesting spin to the story. She is a creative and industrious busy-body with a vivid imagination that enjoy coming up with antics supposed to have favorable outcomes. She stops at nothing to make her ideas happen, but has a good heart. She is a firm believer in UFOs and the use of social media, which creates vital and enjoyable additions to the plot.
Charlene’s social media activity plays a crucial role in the development of the plot as she tries to draw crowds to Pie Town. While I found it entertaining and interesting, I felt it took up a lot of space in the plot and might have been shortened a bit.

I really enjoyed the vibe of small-town living where everybody knows everybody else.
In spite of all the craziness, the plot seems to progress steadily, which I am pleased to see. There seem to emerge useful clues for the investigation, which became interesting elements to the story.

Pies Before Guys is recommended for fans of Kirsten Weiss and for readers of cozy mystery. Thank you to Kensington Books via Netgalley for this eARC in return for my honest review.
All opinions are completely my own.

Pie, murder and UFO's set the scene for this latest book. A poetry "slam" held at Pie Town results in the death of a local professor. Val and Charlene are trying hard not to become the latest victims!

I am a fan of the series and it had all the Val and Charlene humor as the other books. The mystery was complex and I didn't guess "whodunit" until the end. For me, I was a little annoyed by Charlene putting Val in dangerous situations and at Val for doing crazy things. Val's relationship with her newly found half-brother was sad because they couldn't seem to connect. I was glad to see Val stand up for herself in the end.

I received an ARC from NetGalley for a fair and honest review of this book.

Val Harris has been through some tough times, but now she's the owner of her own pie shop in a small California town. With the help of a diverse group of friends -- including a half-brother she recently learned of and an eccentric elderly pie crust expert -- she's determined to solve a mysterious literary murder that's threatening the health of her shop.
With a poem for a clue and plenty of complicated romantic entanglements, this is a fun read. The characters are quirky but not implausible, and the local color adds to the enjoyment. Smart dialogue and creative crimes round out the story.
If you haven't read the previous installments in the series, you won't get lost, but you should read them. The growth of the characters and their relationships are part of the fun.

Pies before Guys is another excellent addition in the Pie Town Mystery series. With each book that I read I become more immersed in the characters lives and revisiting them is like visiting old friends. Kirsten Weiss is a wonderful author and I truly hope she continues writing books in this series because they are all favorites of mine!

4.5 Stars

This is the fourth book in the Pie Town Mystery series by Kirsten Weiss.

Basic premise: A local professor is found dead after reading poetry at a poetry slam put on at the Pie Town Bakery. As soon as the body was discovered the suspect list just kept growing in leaps and bounds. Val reluctantly puts the Baker Street Bakers back into the mystery solving business, much to Detective Carmichael’s dismay.

There was all kinds of gooey goodness in this story. The characters were amazing. So fully formed it felt like I was reading about our neighbor’s exploits instead of reading a book. Even the cat had a quirky disposition.

I have to admit that the mystery was so good that when the killer was finally revealed, I was stunned. I didn’t even have that person on my suspect list. Figures! This series just keeps getting better and better and I look forward to each release as they come out.

If you haven’t read this series, might I suggest you start from the beginning. Let the atmosphere enfold you into the Pie Town goodness. You won’t regret it.

I received this as an ARC (Advanced Reader Copy) in return for an honest review. I thank NetGalley, the publisher and the author for allowing me to read this title.

Pies, a tiny home, a likeable main character--plenty to like in this series. But I do find the constant back and forth over whether she should or shouldn't be investigating rather tiresome. This seems to be more and more common in cozies, and especially with a boyfriend cop (another common trope), it feels like the justification starts to take over the whole story.

Review copy provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

While I certainly didn't set myself up for success by crash landing into the middle of the series without reading any of the previous books (or anything else by this author), ultimately this story left me cold.

The setup is charming--Val runs a pie shop in a small town and, along with her pie crust maker Charlene, she can't help but engage in some amateur sleuthing anytime a body is found. Unfortunately, the town is filled with with flat, one-note characters--crotchety old guys always eager for some new gossip, youths who are only identified by their interest in gaming, some weirdos that are super passionate about UFOs, Charlene's nemesis Marla, and Val's seemingly perfect cop boyfriend Gordon. Perhaps all those characters are more fully fleshed out in the previous books, but in this one those characters felt like hastily sketched stereotypes so as to ensure that Val's pie shop wasn't perpetually empty.

What I found to be the most frustrating, though, was Val and Charlene's relationship. It reeks of codependency. Val is perpetually taking responsibility for Charlene's erratic behavior, worrying about Charlene's safety and welfare when she disappears on her, and putting Charlene's (sometimes bonkers) needs before her own, even at the risk of her own physical safety. Multiple times during the story I wanted to shake Val and tell her that her relationship with Charlene is not what a healthy, found-family relationship looks like. Maybe for some other folks Charlene's behavior reads as a wacky old broad just out there in the world loving life and being spontaneous, but all I could see was a lack of healthy boundaries and a clear need for Val to go see a therapist.

I love this fun, cozy mystery series. This can be read as a stand-alone, but I would recommend reading the rest of the series to get to know the characters better. This had a great mystery, but it was also nice to see how all the characters were doing.

This is the 4th installment in the Pie Town Mystery series. Val and Charlene have a poetry slam (never heard of this before this book!) at the pie shoppe in hopes of getting some of the university students to come and Abril her employee is thrilled to death (pardon the pun) as she has a thing for professor Michael Starke who gets accused of plagiarism and then ends up murdered. Abril wants Charlene and Val to investigate and then the fun begins. Charlene is a hoot and the story is a fast read that keeps you engaged in the story and the characters. Fun loving mystery and really enjoy the series.

This is a fun book to spend an afternoon on. I have been reading the series from the beginning so I am familiar with the characters. That helps a bit as some introductions are light. Val gets drawn into the mystery due to the body showing up not long after a poetry slam that was held at her pie shop. Val and her sidekick, Charlene, sitick their noses into the business of some of the professors and students at the nearby college. The characters help make the story interesting. Charlene is a hoot. She involves Val in a side story of a fake UFO sighting using Pie Town tins! She brings some levity into the story.. I enjoyed reading about their exploits and hope the brother, Doran, will be brought into future books more.

This is a fun addition to this cozy mystery series.
When a poetry reading goes horribly wrong, Val and Charlene are back to investigating while creating mouthwatering pies.
Charlene also has her hands full trying to avoid Marla as well as creating interesting UFO pics.

Be sure to mark your calendar for the release date.

This book has all the standard elements of a cozy mystery.
I strongly suggest you read the previous books in the series before you read this one.
I voluntarily reviewed an advance reader copy of this book.