Birch Point Lake Park is the perfect place in Maine to enjoy your favorite food truck and a day playing in the sun. Unfortunately, a rash of murders overwhelm the beloved trucks upending the lives of families now desperately determined to clear their names while clinging to their faith.

Death by Food Truck mixes, bakes, and serves four faith-based cozy mysteries as the perfect palate cleanser for your next night curled on the couch.

In “Un-lucky Noodles”, Mei and her best friend Wei have poured their lives into their popular food truck, slowly rebuilding after Mei runs away from an abusive relationship. But suddenly her ex turns up threatening to bring her world down one more time.

In “Dead as Donut”, Angel, with the support of her grandmother Ida, has finally opened the donut truck of her dreams. Her sugary sweet concoctions are popular with the construction crews until one of their own turns up dead behind her truck.

In “Lethal Spuds”, Shanice is helping her grandfather run the Spudmobile for the summer when accusations of poisoning abound from an unlikely source.

Finally, in “Taco Tragedy”, Marissa is dreaming of expanding her award-winning fare to a lakefront building when a food judge mysteriously chokes in front of her truck.

Death by Food Truck is a predictable, diverse cozy mystery collection that brings humor and grace to each story. They are reminders of faith through trials and God’s overarching love and forgiveness.

“Un-lucky Noodles” may contain triggers for those with a history of emotional and/or physical abuse. “Lethal Spuds” may contain triggers for war refugees or members of the military, particularly from the Vietnam era.

I enjoyed each one of these easy, quick reads perfectly suited for my bedtime routine. I highly recommend it for young adult and adult readers who enjoy faith based books or cozy mysteries. These stories would make an enjoyable adult book club discussion or teaching moments for young adults.

2.5 stars, rounded up to 3.

The novellas' plots held promise, and I did enjoy the faith element in each--but the writing on them all! Consistently overwritten, which was unfortunate; being novellas, word count is already at a premium, and the overwriting/overexplaining meant time and attention couldn't be given where it needed to be--fleshing out plot, developing compelling characters, etc.

I was just curious enough with each to discover the perpetrator (or validate my [proved accurate] guesses) that I did finish, but I can't say I'll jump to full-length books by the authors.

I received an eARC of the book from the publisher via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

I love food themed cozy mysteries. And a book with four short stories is a great way to get to know for new authors.

The first story is about Mey, who was in an abusive relationship for four years until she became a Christian and that gave her the insights to leave. And she left good. Moved all the way to Maine from Texas. But now, her ex has found her and he wants her back.

She agrees to meet him for a talk the next morning, but the ex doesn’t show up. So she and her friend go to work at their food truck, where about an hour later a cop knocks on the door and points out a man - her ex - sitting at one of the tables outside her food truck. Dead.

You’d think they would have noticed him sitting there when they arrived. Hard to believe that they didn’t.

The story is just one hot mess of police behaving like total idiots. The cop at the food truck wastes no time to arrest Mey. The dead guy hasn’t even been moved to a stretcher yet. (I don’t think there’s even a forensic examiner at the scene. Mey wasn’t seen poking a big knife into her ex, so to arrest her seems rather premature.)

The detective on the scene has only slightly more sense. He say Mey is not under arrest, but before he starts taking statements, he lets Mey and Wei - his most likely eye-witnesses / persons of interest - bundle into a car to get their stories straight. Then leaves his crime scene to join the eye-witnesses / persons of interest for coffee and some snacks.

The detective asks a few questions then, mainly about how abusive the ex was. Then a week later returns to get a statement from Mey about the night the ex showed up. Never mind that the detective takes his prime suspect (for lack of other suspects, I am sure. The evidence against Mey is wafer thin.) with him to the motel the victim was staying.

I kept on reading because I had high hopes the story would be short. It is short. And bad, very, very bad. In lieu of an actual personality, Mey has her faith and her abuse stories. The cop and the detective are idiots. The murderer has a personality disorder (“He never lied to me.” “He lied to me all the time.”), and the wrap up - after the murderer has been caught - takes way, way too long. There was no mystery (other than how did this get published?) Not a good story to open a four story book with.

The second story features Angel, owner of Dream Donuts. Her second day of work starts badly: there’s a dead man behind her food truck and he’s holding a donut. The detective on duty is quick to make the connection between a dead donut eater and the donut vendor next to it. He is not so quick in securing his crime scene and collecting the evidence. Angel does a quick sweep of the perimeter and finds a knife that may have been used to frost the dead man’s donut.

I don’t frost, I glaze, she points out to the detective. To which the detective does not reply: the frosting knife is in front of you. He doesn’t even point out that any evidence she found can’t be used in her defence, or arrest her for tampering with evidence.

The detective sort of believes Angel that the frosted donut is not hers. At least, she’s not brought in for questioning. A lot of people around the food truck site think she had something to do with the death of the construction worker. When another construction worker (a guy Angel gets flutters around her heart from) is brought in for questioning, he and Angel decide to team up and find out what’s going on.

At first I thought the story was rushed, but that it held promise.

Then Angel and Jack decide to start breaking the law to dig up the dirt on his employer. And a whole bunch of other cozy clichés get thrown at them (and the reader). By that time, I wanted to rush through the story, ‘cause every day and every scene started to look alike.

As a side note: it would have been nice if there had been some interaction between the characters of the different food trucks. In this story that didn’t go further than getting food from one of the trucks. And that didn’t always go right. At one point Angel is eating chow mein (a Chinese dish) which she supposedly got from the Lucky Noodle food truck, a food truck that serves Japanese food.

The third story features Shanice Williams, who started working at her grandfather’s food truck four months earlier. Lately, there have been rumours and complaints about the quality and hygiene of the food from his food truck. Her grandfather, Tater, suspects his best friend since childhood (Lyman) from starting this. The two men set up a meeting to talk it over, but after some bad news from the owner of the food truck plot, Tater decides to go walk-about and sends Shanice over in his place.

Shanice finds the body of Lyman. The next morning a police detective (yet another one than in the other food truck stories) informs her that Lyman was killed. His stomach contains a large amount of sleeping pills, mixed with the mash potatoes from his take-away. Naturally, Shanice and Tater are suspects.

This one has a pretty good mystery and many secrets are revealed during Shanice’s investigation. There are a few things that don’t add up, such as: why does Shanice have the same last name as her maternal grandfather? And if the police searched Lyman’s house, why did they not take the tape marked “my death sentence”?

Story four features Marissa Valdez, who runs the Crunchy Taco Food Truck after the death of her grandmother. Marissa has a lot on her plate: running the food truck, dealing with her grumpy cook, taking care of her younger brother (he’s minor), she’s preparing to be judged for a food competition and now the piece of land her grandmother wanted to buy to open up a restaurant has come up for sale.

The owner of the land likes Marissa’s plan for a restaurant and wants to sell her the property. This upsets the other interested party - who wanted to build a hotel - and also all the owners of Mexican themed restaurants. Now, they might have a point that Birch Tree is too small for four Mexican themed restaurants, but apparently it is not too small for three Mexican themed restaurants and a Mexican themed food truck. And rather than gloat that they are established restaurants and Marissa would be just starting out and do you know 50 percent of all businesses close again within five years, these restaurant owners make threats to Marissa to not even get started.

They’re a bit too caricatural for my taste.

Then the judge from the food contest dies after swallowing the first bite from the taco Marissa served her. Marissa is interviewed, but not arrested. Her food truck is deemed a crime scene, though, and this gives Marissa time to do her own investigation.

Strangely though, she does not go after the person that has been behaving the most suspiciously. As if that wasn’t eye-rolling enough, Marissa and her brother José decide to eavesdrop on their suspects because she “could not find any faults in his plan”. Completely missing the obvious one: you can wait a long time before people say anything of interest (without being prodded).

For a short story, this one took too long to get to the murder (actually, any mystery where it takes 40% of the story to get to the murder is off balance). And since I already knew who the murderer was going to be, it then also took too long to get to the resolve. Though in most cozies the murderer is someone the sleuth did not consider, it works better for the story if there aren’t any obvious reasons to suspect them.

As a side note, Marissa has a Mexican heritage. Unless I’m told otherwise I’m going to imagine her as catholic. She mentioned praying often, yet she never mentioned making the sign of the cross. She didn’t even mention making the sign of the cross when she kneeled next to the judge and realised that she was dead. A devout catholic would have made the sign of the cross.

In short: I liked only one of these stories. It is that story that saved this book from a one star rating from me.

Unlucky Noodles , Dead as Donut , Lethal Spuds and Taco Tragedy are four novellas centered on a food truck gathering in town . Each serves delicious food to the community . Unfortunately each truck is hit with a murder which takes each story through twists and turns to solve the murder before the hero themselves is murdered.

My favorite story was Lethal Spuds. It had a great story which kept me guessing until the end.

All four novellas were clean and wholesome . I enjoyed how each book talked about the other food trucks . All stories were well presented, interesting and definitely a mystery. The gospel songs mentions of Christ were a nice bonus without being “too preachy”. Well done !

A big thank you to Netgalley for a free copy in exchange for an unbiased review .

Cute, but seemed to try and pack a lot of things into such short stories. I had a hard time enjoying them because it they were all cramming a full book's worth of clues and suspects into a short. That said, it was nice to see the different stories and characters make little appearances in the other stories. Just an fyi that this is heavy on the Christianity, which I wasn't expecting, so be aware it's there. Nothing obnoxious, but it was mentioned and fairly prominent.

I'm rating each story separately.

The Unlucky Noodles was really gripping and a page turner. It set my expectations for the book. I'm giving it 4.5 stars.

Dead as Donut seemed to drag on and the ending was soooo not satisfying. I'm giving it 2 stars.

Lethal Spuds had a plot twist that I did not see coming, but it dragged on as well. I'm giving it 3 stars.

Taco Tragedy was a breeze but I didn't feel it had high stakes. I didn't like the fact that I was right when suspected the culprit and that there were so many signs that pointed to the culprit and the MC didn't see them. Jose redeemed this story with his Sherlock Holmes references. I giving it 4 stars.

This collection of novellas looked (I love the feel of this cover!) and sounded like it would be a fun group of connected cozy mysteries all centered around a group of food trucks in a small Maine community. Sadly, I ended up not really enjoying this collection. In a couple of the stories, the main female character was just so unlikable that it really took me out of their stories. Also, some of the police procedures were totally unbelievable. I mean would a detective ever let the main suspect go through the victims hotel room to see what “seemed out of character” for the deceased? Another issue I had was that the detectives seemed to just wildly accuse with no real evidence to back up their accusations. Finally, I never really felt invested in solving the murders because we knew so little about the victims we never became invested in the who and why of the crime.

I received a complimentary copy of this book. All opinions are my own. 2 stars.

What a fun read! This collection has four cozy mystery novellas that were great reads. They are all clean books that hold your attention from the first page until the last. This is a great collection of Christian cozy mysteries that were a joy to read.
I received a complimentary copy from Barbour Publishing via NetGalley and was not required to write a review. All opinions expressed are my own.

This collections sounds like so much fun! A cozy mystery collection centering around different food trucks and their little found community! I admittedly don’t read a lot of cozy mystery novels, but the concept was intriguing. I will say that despite my best efforts I could not bring myself to enjoy this collection. I’m several of the books the main characters were just hard to like and I struggled to connect with them as a reader. I’m not someone who likes mean or rude girls and this seemed to be a common trend for the heroines in this collection. I also was constantly distracted by the absolute lack of authenticity in police procedures that took place in these stories. From murder suspects rifling through victims belongings in the presence of detectives to wild assumptions on cause of death based on appearances alone, it was hard to believe. I also found no interest in solving a crime where the reader was not invested in the victim in any way. All in all I expected a fun, who dun-nit style cozy mystery collection with a cast of fun quirky characters, but it definitely did not deliver.

This was a fun read! I read it all straight through, but it would have been especially fun if I would have let each story settle and read something else in between. I love a good cozy mystery, but it felt like a LOT to run through four in a row, even if they were shorter. I genuinely enjoyed each set of characters and seeing how they all overlapped, as each story revolves around a different food truck in a group that all rents space in the same area. These were all so sweet and exactly what I’m looking for in a cozy mystery!

Just a note: I received a digital advanced copy. There were lots of weird page breaks and typos, but I’m not sure how much of that was just because it was not a finalized copy. Hopefully all of that is fixed now!

Thank you to NetGalley for sending me an advanced copy. All opinions expressed above are my own.

This was kind of a hard read lacked detail and some spots were boring. I like this idea of a murder mystery involving this theme though. Willing to try more if the author has more in the works

I love the premise of this novella collection. I am a huge cozy mystery fan and a food truck theme is guaranteed to thrill me. It’s definitely more mystery than romance as at least one of the stories as almost no romance and the a couple others it’s a very small thread in the story. That did surprise me a bit as Barbour collections are usually first and foremost romances but that didn’t didn’t detract from my overall enjoyment of the collection. As someone who reads a LOT of cozy mysteries, these were good. While this won’t be a favorite for me, I did enjoy the collection and I hope Barbour publishes more stories in a cozy theme.

I received this book from NetGalley and was not required to post a positive review. All thoughts are my own

4 short cozy christian stories all set in the same food truck court. It's hard to give a review on a collection of stories as you always like one more than the others. All books were connected to each other by mention of each other's food trucks and a couple of name drops here and there however each book seemed like there had never been another murder with the food trucks. You would expect that by the 3rd or 4th murder there would be mentions of previous crime in the direct vicinity.
Overcoming that. I enjoyed that each books main characters were completely different to each other except the common theme of them all being Christians. They were easy to read and enjoyable. I would have liked them to be a bit more gutsy and not so easy to figure out. I would definitely recommend especially if your in search if a short quick read.

okay, i super enjoyed this book!! it was such a fun time and i really hope that you pick it up when it comes out! and as always, thank you so much to netgalley for letting me read this book early! what a delight!!!!

A fun, fast-paced collection of mysteries set in the small town of Birch Tree, Maine. The food truck court near a peaceful lake is the host to four suspicious deaths, pointing the finger at the truck owners. Amateur sleuths find the truth out with some antics and mishaps along the way.
The stories were easy to read, with some bits of humor, faith and a hint of romance. The heroines bravely face their fears, using Scripture and prayer to bolster their courage, with the help of loyal friends. I liked the cultural aspects to the stories, especially the last one, with Marissa and her brother Jose. The side characters added a bit of spark to some, like the grandma's garden club who helped to solve the mystery in one tale. The sad backstory of overcoming abuse in the first story may be helpful for someone facing that.
Readers who enjoy a lighter mystery with faith may enjoy this book. It would be a good beach read.

Thanks to Netgalley and the Publisher for this ARC. I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
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This book is a collection of four cozy mysteries written by different authors and consists of different main characters. All of the Novellas are set in Birch Lake, Maine. The reason I requested this book was because it consists of two of my favorite things; food(I love reading about food) and amateur sleuths.
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The only change I could have made was that I wanted the characters to be featured in all of the novellas, their lives should be intertwined. The only thing that featured was just the names of the food trucks, and the owners didn't know themselves.
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I liked UNLUCKY NOODLES(3.5 stars), it was okay. Although it was short, there was a lot of meaningful lessons I learned. I also liked Mey's support system.
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DEAD AS DONUTS(2 stars) was my least favorite. It was slow even though it was a novella, I just couldn't connect with any of the characters.
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When I started LETHAL SPUDS(4 stars), it was kinda boring, but after the first few chapters, I started enjoying it, and it was very good. I loved the aspect of the Vietnamese war and its complications. I liked all of the characters
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My favorite is TRAGEDY TACOS(4.5 stars), it was the best! I got the hang of the novella very fast, and I wasn't bored at all. I read it in one sitting

This is a good collection of novella length cozy mysteries centered around four food trucks. Each novella involves a murder that must be solved by the food truck owner to keep from being arrested. It was interesting to read how each amateur sleuth worked to ultimately identify the villain. I was a little surprised that one of them did some illegal acts. That just didn't feel right.

It is sometimes the case with fiction collections that the quality of the writing varies greatly. These authors were consistent in their good quality of writing. Characters were crafted well as were the plots. There is a good faith message in each one but not overwhelming. Two of the food trucks are ethnic (Asian, Mexican) and I would have liked to know a bit more about the food such as spices or unique ingredients.

Reading a collection of novellas like this one is a good way to be introduced to new authors. Each of these authors writes well enough that I will be looking for full length novels by them.

I received a complimentary egalley of this book from the publisher. My comments are an independent and honest review.

I missed the part where these would be Christian stories. I thought they were just cozy mysteries. I do not like having religion shoved in my face, so I didn’t love these short stories. The premise of the mysteries was fun, four stories written about food trucks in the same place. But, the religious components were got in the way.

Cozy mysteries have fallen flat for me the past. The ones I've ready just felt too hokey.

I read this one because Joi Copeland was one of the authors, I'm glad I did!

The stories were cute and had some mysteries to solve. (no hokey feeling)

All the stories focused around the same location and you saw some cross over in the characters. Although similar in focus (food trucks) each author added their own special twist to the story. Each story had the characters you loved and the ones you didn't trust.

Nice light reading on a hot summer day!

Disclaimer: I did received this book from the publisher, but was under no obligation to provide a review. All opinions expressed are my own.

Wasn't really for me, but overall well written, with interesting characters, mysteries, and Christian faith.

While it didn't strike the right cord for me, I would highly recommend it to Christians who also love mysteries!