You Feta Watch Out

• Author: Linda Reilly
• Genre: Cozy Mystery
• Publication Date: November 19, 2024
• Publisher: Beyond the Page
• Series: Grilled Cheese Mysteries #5

Thank you to NetGalley and Beyond the Page for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Humbug! leads to Homicide! in the new Grilled Cheese Mystery by Linda Reilly . . .

Christmas in the close-knit community of Balsam Dell promises to be especially festive for Carly Hale this year when a prominent theater company comes to town to stage A Christmas Carol. But it turns out that Scrooge is not the most ill-tempered character in the production, as blowhard actor Prescott Lennon proves when he begins berating everyone else in the cast for their poor theatrics. When his arrogant behavior threatens the production, someone decides to resolve matters with a fatal solution—and frames Carly’s friend Gina for the murder.

With such an unlikable victim, Carly finds herself faced with a long list of suspects, including a grieving widow who hasn’t shed a tear, an ambitious understudy looking for his big break, and all the cast members Lennon mistreated. But there’s a ghost of a clue in the air as rumors begin to surface that the dead man had a shady past that may have come back to haunt him. With her friend still on the hook, Carly will have to sort out past misdeeds from those of the present, even as her pursuit of the killer scares the dickens out of her . . .

Includes melt-in-your-mouth sandwich recipes!

As someone who has always loved grilled cheese as a comfort food, it’s kind of hard for me to resist a whole cozy mystery series featuring grilled cheese as almost a character in itself. This series is absolutely delightful, and I love knowing that there’s going to be amazing recipes included at the end. 

I have really liked this series since day one, and have only found myself adoring the characters and setting of small-town Balsam Dell, Vermont. Although Carly and her crew live in a small town, there’s always something big occurring in the town that draws people from near and far to attend. Like the theater presentation A Christmas Carol that is being put on, courtesy of a known theater company. 

With a well-known theater company putting on a stage presentation for the Christmas season, the town is full of new people as well as the ones that we’ve gotten to know over the course of the previous four books. Carly and Ari, her boyfriend, along with the crew at the eatery have all earned a place in my heart over the four previous books, and I love seeing them. Part of what I love about this cast of characters is how genuinely sweet and wholesome the main group truly is. There’s a bit of a Mary Sue kind of vibe to people in small towns, but since I’ve never personally lived in a small town, I don’t know if there are places where people are all nice and friendly.

In this book, the murder suspect was an actor with a difficult personality. He’s mean to Carly’s BFF Gina, which already made me dislike him, and then he freaked out in the middle of the dress rehearsal and forced the show to take an unplanned intermission. But before the show can go on, he’s found dead by none of there than Gina, making her suspect numero uno, and we already know Carly is going to do whatever she needs to do to prove her friend’s innocence.

The biggest difference in this book is that people have just accepted Carly as a freelancing crime-solver. From the start, when she was actively discouraged and warned away from interfering with the case, both Carly and the law enforcement officers in this book have compromised to work together—but Carly has been a bit better about keeping herself safe, and the sheriff has been better about accepting that she is going to help, and understanding that she actually makes a pretty good detective. 

In this book, we get to see Carly a lot more settled in her relationship and living situation, but we also see her relationship with her sister Norah in a deeper light. Norah is in town with her boyfriend, and we get to see the sisterly bond between them firsthand. It was nice to see Carly when she was more relaxed and really feeling the Christmas spirit, even though she can’t possibly avoid putting on her crime solving hat when someone she cares about is on the hook for a murder that wasn’t their fault. Even so, I can’t help but love Havarti as my favorite character.

There are a lot of potential suspects in the story, and Reilly kept me on my toes with guessing who the killer was. It’s complicated by the fact that basically everyone who came in contact with Lennon hated him, so anyone he was in contact with is potentially his killer. It made for interesting reading, and I couldn’t resist making my own guesses, but I was surprised by who it turned out to be, in the end. 

Overall, this is a fantastic addition to a series I love. Carly and her crew, both at the eatery and outside of it, are written wonderfully and it makes them easy to love, even with the Mary Sue vibes. The plot is well-paced and didn’t drag or feel drawn out at any point. I finished this book in record time, and while I’m impatiently waiting for the next book, I’ll have to make some of the recipes from this book.

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