Spoon to be Dead 

• Author: Dana Mentink
• Genre: Cozy Mystery
• Publication Date: October 31, 2023
• Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press
• Series: Shake Shop Mysteries #3

Thank you to NetGalley and Poisoned Pen Press for providing me with a copy of this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

A murder for the holidays is about to shake things up!

Trinidad Jones is starting the festive season with sugary confections and a heaping scoop of worry as her shake shop enters its first Oregon winter. With snow abound and tourists trickling through, she’ll do anything to keep her milkshake dreams afloat, even if it means catering a holiday steamboat party for some new arrivals in town.

But when her good-for-nothing ex crashes through her shop’s door claiming he’s being charged with murder, things go sideways. With clues piling up like whipped cream on a sundae and motives abound, Trinidad and her fellow ex-wives must solve this murder before she’s finally thrown for a scoop.

The third book in the Shake Shop Mysteries following Trinidad Jones who makes sweet confections and solves sticky situations in her small town!

I’ve really enjoyed the first two books in this series, and was excited to return to Upper Sprocket, Oregon to see Trinidad Jones, the Shimmy and Shake Shop, and the quirky crew that makes up her social circle of friends and family. It’s even more of a fun setting because the strange chain of events that brought her to Upper Sprocket led to her making friends with the other two ex-wives of her former husband, and developing a sisterly bond with them. Found family is done so wonderfully in this series.

First and foremost, I was heartbroken to discover that this is the last book in the series. It’s become one of my favorite cozy series to seek out, so naturally I’m going to miss the characters, the quirky town, and the stories that have entertained me each year. However, I did notice some changes in this story, compared to the first two, while other things that made this series stand out stayed the same.

For the first time, we get to see what the small, unique town of Upper Sprocket is like during the winter. Trinidad is freaking out about how she’s going to keep the shop afloat through the cold months, and it leads to some creative solutions on the part of Trina and the people around her—her sisters, employees, Papa Luis, and some unexpected sources as well. But just in case she didn’t have enough stress on her plate, Bonnie (one of her ‘sisters’) seems to be keeping a secret, and their ex, Gabe, shows up in town talking about being charged with a murder. Trinidad promises herself that she’ll stay out of it, but she winds up getting pulled into being an unwilling amateur investigator once again.

Gabe’s presence and Trinidad’s assistance to him causes some friction in her relationship with Quinn, and Bonnie’s secret leads to some distance between she and both Trinidad and Juliette. And Juliette is a whole other story—she’s smart, beautiful, and independent, but I think that she really deserved better in this book than throwing herself at the first handsome guy who shows up in town, and basically becoming arm candy. I was disappointed in how the characters seem to move backwards in their character arcs during the story, although they do end up growing from their experiences.

The mystery in the story actually winds up encompassing more than one mini-mystery, and it kept me engaged from early on right up until the end. Mentink does a fantastic job of building a great mystery with plenty of suspects with strong motivation, and multiple red herrings. I thought I had the murderer nailed more than once, and by my third guess, I got it right. But knowing that I knew who the murderer was didn’t detract from how much I enjoyed this story.

Overall, this was a great story. I really loved how it all panned out, even though things wrapped up a bit too neatly at the end—not in respect to the murder, but with respect to the people involved in the story. My favorite character in the story was definitely Noodles, the aging service dog that flunked out of training, yet somehow manages to do the perfect thing when its needed. He always plays such a big role in the books since he spends most of his time with Trinidad, rather than just being a side note in the story, and he even gets a feathered (*somewhat feathered) new friend to love. It was the most wholesome thing in the world. And while I’m super sad there won’t be any more Shake Shop Mysteries (or shake shop recipes either), I am curious to see what else Mentink has in store for her readers.

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