CANDY CANE CRIME is book number 5.5 in the Amish Candy Shop Mystery series and switches perspectives from the earlier books. Cousin Charlotte is the main heroine and volunteers to help Bailey King out with yet another task Margot Rawlings wants to pile onto Bailey. Bailey has her hands full helping her grandmother fill orders for their Amish candy store, Swissmen Sweets and her own New York cable tv show to handle one more thing- but of course, Margot has a task she wants filled. Charlotte loves the idea of helping with the Candy Cane Exchange, never expecting she’d run into both a secret admirer and a mystery in the process!
Charlotte has been a reliable albeit somewhat mysterious character in the Amish Candy Shop Mystery series, so I was glad to see Amanda Flower flesh out a bit more about her plans. Charlotte has been in her rumspringa since the age of 14 and has yet to be baptized in the Amish faith, something that horrifies some of the more traditional Amish leaders. We have seen Charlotte exposed to other more Englisch things, such as her trip to New York City, and I’m thrilled to see Charlotte starting to make a decision.
Amanda Flower’s books are always a joy to read, and CANDY CANE CRIME is no exception. It’s a novella, so the plot is a bit shorter and more condensed than some of the other tales in the series, but it is worth every moment of time spent reading it. I strongly recommend all books by Amanda Flower, and CANDY CANE CRIME is a great place to start if you want to just get a tiny taste of her phenomenal storytelling. I can’t wait to see what Amanda Flower has in store for us next!
Christmas is coming all too quickly for Harvest, Ohio's famous chocolatier, Bailey King. Thanks to her new cable TV show, her shop has more candy orders than she can handle this holiday season. Fortunately, her beloved Cousin Charlotte is happy to take the Candy Cane Exchange off Bailey's to-do list. After all, Charlotte has come to Harvest from her conservative home district to find her future outside of her family's influence. What better way than by taking on the Englisch task of pairing the sweet notes everyone is exchanging with a peppermint treat, just in time for Christmas Eve delivery? But when Charlotte discovers some of those delicious missives are for her, suddenly she's staking out the festive postbox, hoping to catch her secret admirer in his intriguing tracks . . .
When Charlotte sees something underhanded going on beneath the merrymaking, she enlists the help of Sheriff Deputy Luke Little to find out if her unknown correspondent is none other than the town's biggest suspect. And the surprising truth about her suitor's identity has her contemplating leaving her Amish roots behind forever . . .