This book was similar to others in the series. There are too many recipes in it. Perhaps it wouldn't be so bad if the recipes were at the end. Instead of being in her 30s. the main character seems like she is a senior citizen.

I am a big time fan of Joanne Fluke and was extremely excited to be able to get my hands on an advanced copy. Christmas Cupcake Murder was a classic Hannah Swensen book, but what I enjoyed is how it went back in time. I really cannot get enough of the characters so I thoroughly enjoyed this one. It was short and sweet and I would recommend this cozy to anyone looking at getting into to cozies.

Another Hannah Swensen cozy mystery that I enjoyed immensely! If you are a fan of the series, this one will also delight you! It has everything you expect from a Joanne Fluke book: a solid mystery, a little bit of romance, the cozy feeling you get when you spend time with your friends, many cups of coffee and lots of mouthwatering recipes!

Where do I start with the inconsistencies, the repetitive word spewing and the old fashion dialect and characterizations?

From what I understand, this was supposed to be a prequel to the first book in the series, The Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder. In the first book, Tracey, Andrea's daughter is 4, here she is a baby. So we are assuming that there are about 3 years between the first book and prequel. The inconstancies between books are staggering but the ones that stood out the most are:

In The Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder Hannah says "Norman is just a friend, so get that idea right out of your head. Tell me more about this new detective from Minneapolis. I don't even know his name." So how in the prequel is Hannah completely buddy-buddy with Mike - almost like family or boyfriend/girlfriend?

In the Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder Andrea is a real estate agent and has been since Tracey was 6 months old. So she must have gotten that job between the prequel and book 1. Fine. But Grandma Mccann is not in the first few books of the series and doesn't start to watch Tracey and her soon to come sister until later. Maybe she took a break? Weird.

Now lets look at the characters. Is this even Fluke writing this book? She has made Andrea dumber than a doornail. How does Andrea not know that temperature in the US is measured in Fahrenheit? They live in Minnesota where weather is kind of a big deal...

And Delores is even crueler than ever with her comments about Hannah's hair.

And Doc Knight's misogynistic comments about women? Are we just supposed to look the other way... or...?

And the descriptions of clothing?! Are we on the set of the Golden Girls? Pantsuits? Sweater, slacks, gold necklaces and leather moccasins? No, thank you!

Whoever wrote this has turned a cast of characters and a story that I love into a royally hot mess. Super disappointing!

I'll read the new book coming out next year but if that disappoints, this series is toast for me.

Such a sweet and cozy mystery! I absolutely love these books. They are easy and do not require a lot of thinking which is the perfect thing to read in between thought provoking novels. They are also the perfect holiday reads including amazing recipes for you to try!

I enjoyed Christmas Cupcake Murder more than I thought I would. This book takes us way back to the time I fell in love with this series. Back when Hannah was dating Norman, Mike was the new detective, and Hannah’s mom was looking into a place for her antiques. I missed that time. This book reminded me of all that I love about this series. When a homeless man stops at Hannah’s shop for something to eat in exchange for work, Hannah has no idea that is the start of a mystery. I really liked the fact that it was a John Doe case rather than a murder. It was fun to put together the pieces of the puzzle in finding out who Joe was. The ending left me happy. Of course, there were new recipes to try. I enjoyed seeing Hannah’s process in developing new treats to serve at the Cookie Jar. I’m awed by all the different recipes that have gone into this series! This book is great for those who, like me, enjoy going down memory lane and for those starting the series. Those who are waiting for the next developments in Hannah’s life may be a tad disappointed at having to wait a little longer. But good things come to those who wait. Enjoy this book and the treats. I really enjoyed the Sugar Plum Cookies. *I received an electronic version of this book, for review consideration, from NetGalley. I also received a copy from my local librarian who was kind enough to bring it to my home as the libraries are currently closed. I was able to switch between the ecopy and the print version. I voluntarily reviewed this book and based my review on my enjoyment of the book.* For me, it was a great escape during a trying year.

Hannah Swenson’s popular Cookie Jar Bakery has been open for two years. Baking is a soothing activity and brings happiness to so many of Lake Eden’s residents. Coming up with new cookie and cupcake recipes is always fun, too.
One especially cold morning, a homeless man knocks at the back door, looking for work. Hannah invites him in for coffee and German chocolate cupcakes. He’s polite, eager to work, and has trouble with his memory. He leaves, promising to return the next day to do odd jobs.

Hannah’s mother, Delores, drops by to ask a favor—or two. She needs help moving a heavy sofa in storage so she can get to Christmas ornaments. Hannah can help retrieve the ornaments, help decorate, and by the way, bring six dozen of the new cupcakes for the staff. With Delores, resistance is futile. Joanne Fluke

While they’re moving furniture, Delores’s friend Carrie comments on how much furniture she has too and comments between them they could open a store. Hannah suggests they rent a space where they could refinish items and sell, too. After decorating the hospital, they stop by the real estate office to see what’s available. Hannah hadn’t thought there would a space available two doors down from her shop—that may just be too much togetherness.

While they’re checking out the space, Hannah finds what she first thinks is a body but instead it’s the homeless man, alive, but in poor shape. He’s hustled off to the hospital, and Hannah’s left with the mystery of who is he. He doesn’t qualify as a missing person—he’s not missing, he’s right there. No one is looking for him. He can remember a few things but not his name or where he’s from. With a few scant clues, Hannah begins to put together a picture of his background.

This is a prequel to the series, taking place before Hannah’s involved with murder cases on a regular basis. Her sister, Andrea is a new mom, Michelle is dating a college boy, Delores is a widow, and Moishe, well, he’s a twenty-three pound cat who generally gets his way. This is book 26 of 27, with Triple Chocolate Cheesecake Murder coming in February 2021, available for pre-order now. To see a list of all 27 books in order, go to tinyurl.com/y5khmydq.

Recipes include: German chocolate cupcakes with cooked pecan coconut frosting or chocolate buttercream frosting, pink peppermint cookies, white chocolate eggnog cupcakes, English eggnog, Christmas baked brie, sugar plum cookies, cinful sugar cookies, cocktail munchie mix, Christmas date cupcakes, holiday cheer cherry cupcakes with cherry frosting, milk chocolate oatmeal cookies, rainbow pickles (dill spears, colored), pineapple white chocolate bar cookies, blue apple pie, Christmas wreath or Santa hat pancakes, coconut crunch cookies, chocolate cherry frosting and strawberry cupcakes, Vegas cookies, and golden raisin rum cupcakes with cinnamon cream cheese frosting. There’s also a baking conversion chart for measurements and temperatures.

Here is another visit from Hannah Swensen in Christmas Cupcake Murder: A Festive and Delicious Christmas Cozy Mystery by Joanne Fluke. This book series is about mystery with some recipes that are great added as well. Some of the mysteries have been fantastic and all the recipes have been wonderful. The book series main appeal are the recipes to me because they are actually included, which are a nice touch. The stories are good too, don’t get me wrong. I have just been mixed on some of the books lately with some of them being stronger or better than others. Often with her books you need to read them in order to get the character backstory as that part is continual, but the mystery or murder elements are new. I recommend this one!

This Christmas installment of the Hannah Swensen series goes back in time to when Tracy is a baby and before Hannah's mother Delores marries Doc Knight. I wasn't sure why, but maybe the author wanted to rekindle the love triangle once again or explain some of the backstory for Delores.

This story is about a homeless man with amnesia that Hannah befriends and her efforts to find out who he is.

As usual light-hearted with delicious sounding recipes!

Oh God this book was terrible. I don't have the words to describe how bad this middle school mystery book for adults was. Just, wow.

Just before Christmas, Hannah Swenson helps a man obviously down on his luck and looking for work. She gives him something to eat and vows to find him some work but just a short while later, he is found, suffering from the cold and with amnesia. While he is recovering, Hannah and her mother and sisters determine to discover who he is.

Christmas Cupcake Murder, the latest Christmas cozy by Joanne Fluke seems somewhat misnamed. There is no dead bodies, murdered or otherwise, for Hannah to stumble upon. There is also little time here devoted to the mystery although, in fairness, it is one that seems a fitting story for the season. What there is is a lot of time devoted to the Christmas side of the title including a whole lot of recipes between chapters, some of which, in a different year, I would love to try out.

Overall, though, I enjoyed Christmas Cupcake Murder quite a bit and would recommend it for anyone looking for a sweet (in more ways than one) Christmas cozy.

<i>Thanks to Netgalley and Kensington Books the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review</i>

Like the last Christmas-themed novel in this series, Christmas Cupcake Murder takes place in our heroine Hannah Swensen’s past, this time about a decade before the current point in the series. Hannah is finally getting her mother Delores to look into renting a space in which to finish, and perhaps sell, Delores’ massive collection of antiques. While looking at a likely property, Hannah, Delores and Claire, her mother’s business partner, stumble across the unconscious body of a drifter Hannah had helped out just a short while earlier.

They immediately rush the poor man to the hospital, but he unfortunately has no idea of either his name or how he’d gotten there. Doc Knight suspects that the severely malnourished Joe Smith, as they’re calling him, was the victim of a traumatic brain injury resulting in selective amnesia. Whether the injury was accidental or deliberate is anyone’s guess, though the more the townsfolk of Lake Eden get to know him, the more they suspect the latter.

This isn’t because of any personality defect of Joe’s: to the contrary, Hannah and her friends find him polite and kind, which only increases their determination to help him figure out who he is so he can return to his own family and friends. But the more they uncover about his past, the more troubling the circumstances of his amnesia seem. When Hannah ingeniously figures out a way to pinpoint where he might be from, their investigations become a race against time to stop a would-be killer from getting away with murder!

Spending time in Lake Eden with Hannah and her crew is an unfailing delight, though it is a bit jarring to go back in time and see Hannah being so blase towards Mike and Norman both (as a fervent member of #TeamNorman, I’ve become convinced that the latest books point her in his direction, so am a wee bit impatient at anything else.) Most of the action in this book is concentrated towards the end, when Hannah hits on her inspired solution and onward, but it’s nice getting reacquainted with the people of Lake Eden in the lead up to that, and to see more of their lives from a decade or so ago. Delores is awful, as always, but everyone else -- including the slightly scandalous and hilarious new girl Rachael -- is fun to be around.

And, as always, there’s a wealth of recipes included! Of the over twenty recipes listed here, I decided to try out this intriguing cookie recipe. My lovely assistant Karin and I have a running joke that oatmeal raisin cookies are the reason we don’t trust blindly, so I really wanted to see how an oatmeal cookie with actual chocolate chips in it would taste:

QUOTE
Milk Chocolate Oatmeal Cookies

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F., rack in the middle position.

1 cup salted butter (2 sticks, 8 ounces, ½ pound)
1 cup white (granulated) sugar
1 cup powdered (confectioners) sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
½ teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 large eggs, beaten (just whip them up in a glass with a fork)
2 and ½ cups all-purpose flour (pack it down in the cup when you measure it)
1 cup (half of a 12-ounce by weight package) milk chocolate chips
1 cup dry oatmeal (I used Quaker Quick 1-Minute Oats)
½ cup white granulated sugar for rolling dough balls

Before you start to mix up this cookie dough, prepare your baking sheets by spraying them with Pam or another cooking spray. Alternatively, you can also line them with parchment paper if you prefer.

Place the butter in a large microwave-safe bowl.

Turn the microwave on HIGH and heat the butter for 1 minute. Leave it in the microwave for another minute of standing time and then check to see if it’s melted. If it’s not, give it another 15 to 20 seconds on HIGH with an equal amount of standing time.

When the butter is melted, set the bowl or measuring cup on the kitchen counter.

Place the 1 cup of white sugar in a large mixing bowl.

Add one cup of powdered sugar to the bowl and mix the two sugars together.

Pour the melted butter over the sugars and mix it in. Continue to mix until it is evenly blended.

Add the vanilla extract and mix that in.

Add the salt and mix that in.

Measure out the 2 teaspoons of baking soda and sprinkle that into your bowl. Then mix it in thoroughly.

Feel the sides of the mixing bowl. If it’s not so hot it might cook the eggs, add them to your bowl.

Mix the eggs in thoroughly.

Measure out the flour, making sure to pack it down in your measuring cup when you measure it.

Add the flour to your mixing bowl in half-cup increments, mixing thoroughly after each addition.

Add the cup of milk chocolate chips to your mixing bowl. Stir them in thoroughly.

Measure out the oatmeal and place it in the bowl.

Mix in the oatmeal until everything is combined.

Place the ½ cup of sugar in a small bowl. You will use this to coat the dough balls.

Roll the dough into walnut-sized balls.

Place the balls in the bowl with the sugar to coat them.

Arrange the sugar-coated dough balls on a prepared cookie sheet, 12 to a standard-sized sheet. (If it’s too sticky to roll, place the bowl in the refrigerator for thirty minutes and try again.)

Use the palm of your impeccably clean hand to squash the cookie dough balls down slightly. That way they won’t roll off the cookie sheet on their way to the oven.

Bake your Milk Chocolate Oatmeal Cookies at 325 degrees F. for 10 to 12 minutes. Remove the cookies from the oven and cool them on the cookie sheet for 2 minutes. Then transfer the baked cookies to a wire rack to cool completely.

Yield: 6 to 7 dozen, depending on cookie size.
END QUOTE

I suspected even as I baked that using steel cut oats instead of instant would be a mistake. While they didn’t render the result inedible, I still felt that these cookies were less a melding of the traditional oatmeal with chocolate chip, and more sugar cookies that I’d happened to add both chocolate chips and oatmeal to, with somewhat indifferent results. I mean, this is definitely a unique twist on your standard cookie, and I’m sure if I’d used instant oatmeal, it would have come much closer to the usual, beloved texture. I just didn’t enjoy this as much as I usually do Joanna Fluke’s recipes. Let me know if you try this recipe out at home and get a better result! I’d also recommend baking only twelve to a cookie sheet, as she suggests, unless your pans are a little larger than usual, as mine are: these cookies definitely spread.

Next week, we stay in the midwest to check out a fun candy recipe while solving a dreadful murder. Do join me!

Holiday time in Lake Eden, has Hannah and family and friends recalling their first missing person case and how they helped a man who lost his memory.

*I received an ARC of this book from netgalley in exchange for an honest review*

I can't lie.. as the first cozy murder mystery series I ever properly indulged in the Hannah Swensen series will always have my heart. Joanne Fluke could send Hannah et al into space to bake cookies for astronauts and I'd be down for it.

For lovers of cozy mysteries this book has so much appeal and I think could be read whether you've dipped into the series before or are new to it. There are a lot of the typical tropes thrown in - young lady small business owner/amateur sleuth who constantly compares herself to other women, her romantic entanglement (as love triangle..of course..) with a police detective.. but these elements are included gracefully and with humour, and the characters are all fully realised and quite endearing.

The Swensen christmas specials always appear somewhere else chronologically than the ongoing series - for previous readers of the series it adds a lot of dimension to an already well created world. I will say I do get distracted though where my brain tries to link where what I'm reading is at with prior books. Fluke does explain in the beginning where this book sits but I still struggled a little (it could just be my brain though..)

This installment is bright, fun, and has a bit of a different twist - its a mystery of identity rather than a whodunnit (which was actually quite enjoyable).

I also can't neglect to mention.. the recipes! I love a cozy with recipes. A lot of them have ingredients difficult to find in Australia if you actually want to make them (as a lazy person I'm still yet to actually bake any of them.. I just love that they're included?)

This was ok, I thought it was going to be different than i thought. I enjoyed it and i really liked the book. It was fun and exciting something a little different to read at the time.

I started this cozy series earlier in 2020, and I absolutely loved the first 14 or so. From there on, however, the writing has become almost unbearable to read. I don't know what went wrong, but I will not be continuing with this series.

I anxiously wait for the next Hannah Swenson novel. Well I wasn't disappointed.

This was a bit different then previous books, in that there isn't an actual murder. But a good mystery.

Do yourself a favor and pick this up.

Christmas Cupcake Murder was a cute and entertaining murder mystery. I'm becoming a bigger fan of murder mysteries the more of them I read. I loved the recipes and food in the story. Overall, this was an enjoyable read!

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Hannah Swenson just keeps plugging along! I always enjoy a trip back to Lake Eden and the delicious sounding recipes the Cookie Jar is known for. I found the actual jump back in timeline to be a bit jarring at first and wish we could just keep on with the series in its' own real time.

Christmas Cupcake Murder is the 26th book in the Hannah Swensen culinary cozy mystery series by Joanne Fluke. Yes, I've read all of the previous ones and although this particular story is very light on the mystery, I still enjoy going back to Lake Eden and visiting with all the characters I have come to love. It isn't the mystery that has me coming back book after book but the cozy and sentimental feelings that a Hannah Swensen book provides. And don't we all need a dose of comfort after the year that is 2020?

In this story, Fluke takes us back to the time when Hannah first opened The Cookie Jar. Although I knew that this was in the past, I couldn't quite figure out when. I didn't let it hold me up long but it was confusing at first. The mystery was entertaining and I do have to saw I gasped out loud at the final scene at the church.

As usual, the story is less about the mystery and more about Hannah's life and the Lake Eden community. We have connected to a lot of characters after 25 books but it is always nice to back and revisit them. Fluke has created very realistic and charming characters that readers want to engage with. and for that I look forward to book 27!