This was like reading a book written for a twelve year old. It just seemed amateurish to me. Sort of a cute story. It only took about 3 hours to read it. ( )

Just a plain Jane book. Not a mystery because you know who did it all alone just not why. ( )

I just couldn't connect with the events in this book. It felt a bit 'throw things in there with loose connections'. Maybe it'd firm up further down the track but I don't know if I'll explore further. ( )

I apologize but this will be a very small review. The reason for that is there isn’t a whole lot to say when you have a standard cozy. A senior baker sleuth, a group of eccentric friends and a drive to solve the case to save an innocent person. That sums up Sweet Ginger Poison. I liked the characters but didn’t like the supporting town characters. This book was very much a story where if the character wasn’t in the main character’s social character they were truly horrible people. I don’t mean that the writer wrote them that way but their actions were terrible so as a listener I was left not really having to root for in the book. So a standard cozy with unlikable characters pretty much sums it up. The narrator was good but some of the voices were very similar. ( )

My biggest problem with this book was with the authenticity and likeability of the characters. The main character’s name is Ginger, a 61-year-old lady who owns a coffee cake shop. Ginger is, I believe, supposed to be the likeable character in the story. However, she annoyed me to no end. She reminded me of one of those people who haven’t had many life experiences of her own and who haven’t been around much diversity, but who have very definite ideas about how everybody should live their lives and are happy to tell them how to do so. It wasn’t even that I necessarily disagreed with many of her opinions, but the way she presented them made me cringe. Then I was annoyed with the characters who were on the receiving end of her advice, because they didn’t react to such poorly-presented advice in a realistic way. As far as the other characters went, it seemed like they were all stupid or evil or both.

Another smaller complaint would be the obligatory romance between Ginger and the reverend. There just wasn’t enough real interaction between them for the relationship to have any impact on me as the reader, and the attempt to create angst between them early on in the book seemed forced. This annoys me in many books, not just this one. It seems like most authors believe that every book they write must have some sort of a romance. If writing a romance isn’t their strong suit, or if it isn’t a natural progression of the story, I wish they would just leave it out and focus on the real story. A good romance can greatly enhance a good book, but a book doesn’t need a romance to be good. A poorly-done romance just drags the book down.

What about the story itself? Well, it wasn’t all that bad. It was a little contrived, but interesting enough for me to get through the book. I was always at least a little curious about what would happen next, and curious to see if any of my theories about what had happened would be proven true. Most of the information relevant to really understanding what had happened wasn’t revealed until much later in the book, which might be annoying to some, but that wasn’t really a sore point with me.

I have quite a backlog of books on my Kindle that I obtained for free back when it was “new and cool” to get free books for my Kindle and I wasn’t yet being very choosy. I believe this was one of those books. So, to offset my negative review, I would just like to add that this probably isn’t a book that I would have chosen to purchase to begin with. Nor, now that I’m being much choosier, is it one that I would have even chosen to download for free. So perhaps I just wasn’t the target audience. I like the occasional mystery, but I typically lean more toward the fantasy and science fiction genres. When it comes to mysteries, I prefer more realism and darkness.

Although it appears that this book is the first one in a series, this book stands completely on its own. So don’t be afraid to give it a try if it sounds interesting to you. You will get a complete story that does not leave you feeling obligated to continue the series if you don’t want to. ( )