Murder at the Summer Cheese Festival

• Author: Jodie Morgan
• Genre: Cozy Mystery
• Publication Date: September 18, 2025
• Publisher: Cozy Cozies
• Series: Silver Springs Mysteries #1

Thank you to the author for sending me an ARC of this e-book in exchange for an honest review.

When cheese becomes deadly business, one woman must slice through lies to uncover the truth.

Laura Evans thought trading her high-stress Boston restaurant career for small-town Vermont charm would bring peace.

Instead, she finds herself knee-deep in cheddar and conspiracy when a body turns up at the General Store after a pre-festival cheese tasting ahead of the Summer Cheese Festival. And her boss Maggie is made the prime suspect.

The festival is less than two weeks away and with the store’s reputation threatened, Laura can’t stand by and watch her new life crumble like aged parmesan.

With the help of her observant landlady, Evelyn Chan, she discovers beneath the town’s picture-perfect surface lies a complex web of rivalries, family secrets, and scandals.

And when there’s an entire festival’s worth of suspects, she must separate friend from foe before it’s too late…

Perfect for fans of cozy mysteries who crave:

• – A relatable amateur sleuth with real-world experience
• – Authentic small-town atmosphere that feels like home
• – Food-focused mysteries with mouthwatering details
• – Gentle suspense with satisfying plot twists
• – Strong community bonds and found family themes
• – Just enough danger to keep you turning pages

This engaging book serves up the perfect blend of mystery and comfort. Every clue unfolds at just the right place, and justice is as satisfying as a perfectly aged Vermont cheddar.

There’s no wonder why I turn to cozy mysteries so often. They have a completely different tone than the gritty police procedurals and fantasy novels I tend to gravitate towards, and I often find myself reading a cozy mystery alongside a heavier themed book so that I can switch back to a lighter and humorous read. So when the author reached out to me, I was thrilled to get a chance to read this one. It sounded really appealing and didn’t let me down.

Laura is a character that I found so easy to like right off the bat. She left the busy restaurant scene in Boston to follow a slower pace in the (fictional) town of Silver Springs, Vermont. It’s a town she spent time in visiting an older family member, and has fond memories of. When she moves into this charming small town, she’s fortunate to easily merge into the social circles of the town, avoiding the awkward acceptance phase that can occur. She’s friendly and easygoing, very observant and gets a good sense about other people, all traits that come in handy when working in the restaurant business. The town itself is so adorable, and it’s got small-town vibes that felt realistic to me. 

I really loved the setting. It’s a small town, where everyone knows everyone else, and although Laura is the new woman in town, she’s not a complete stranger to the older residents, allowing her to go around and really get an outside perspective on the people in the town that insiders might not notice. The town of Silver Springs sounds gorgeous—Vermont is somewhere I’ve always wanted to visit, and this story makes it sound irresistible. I especially loved the fact that there is a local club for crafters, and includes men and women of all ages, allowing them to work on various crafts while chatting and enjoying a potluck. 

When it comes to the mystery, Morgan kept me on my toes. I couldn’t figure out the killer with, and there were plenty of red herrings that actually felt believable, making this a really enjoyable read. I like when I can’t solve the mystery early on, because if I can identify the killer early on, I feel cheated because what’s the point of continuing to read if you already solved it? Laura does a great job of toeing the line between nosy neighbor and new community member, and is assisted in her investigation by her older landlord, Evelyn. It’s clear that Laura is fitting into the town nicely, and I love how she was quickly ‘adopted’ as found family to her landlord and some of the other people in the town, like the crafter’s club and her work. 

I’ve worked as a restaurant server in my younger days, and I thought that the ebb and flow and dynamics between coworkers were depicted really accurately here. Same with the crafting, and I quickly fell in love with Silver Springs and (most of) its residents. Laura’s work in the General Store felt so similar to my own server days, in the best way. Her coworkers are friendly and welcoming to her, and it’s hard not to like a manager who gets her hands dirty and doesn’t ask you to do anything she wouldn’t do, and that is exactly how Laura is. Naturally, she loves the town and her job, and is pushed to investigate independently when suspicion falls on her boss, threatening to shut down the store and restaurant. 

The dynamic between Evelyn and Laura was fantastic, and seems like a great friendship. They work beautifully together, and are able to highlight their strengths—Evelyn as a lifelong resident who knows everyone in the town and nearly everything that goes on, while Laura is able to politely get to know them a little better while asking her questions. Since the story revolves around a cheese festival, there are many different mouthwatering descriptions of cheese, and I’m not even a cheese lover but had a craving while reading. Luckily there are some recipes included at the end of the book.

Overall, this was a fun read. It took me a while to get through it, because the pacing is a bit uneven, even though I really did fall in love with Silver Springs and the characters in the story. I would have liked to delve a little more deeply into Laura’s character and her history, which is vaguely alluded to at the beginning. Also, there are quite a few characters in the story—the author included a list of characters at the beginning of the book and it came in handy several times. As the first book in a series, I usually expect a bunch of new characters to be introduced quickly, so I wasn’t surprised with this one. We don’t get to fully know all of the side characters, and I would have liked to get to see them a bit more, but I hope that the next book in the series lets readers get to know Laura and the side characters a bit more. 

Bottom line: A fun cozy that kept me on my toes guessing the murderer, with a town that feels like it should be real so we can visit, plus all the yummy descriptions of the foods, this is a good start to a series.

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