Hayley Powell [01] Death of a Kitchen Diva - 008

Hayley Powell is a 35-year-old single mom of two teenagers who works as the office manager at the Island Times, the smaller of two newspapers based in Bar Harbour, Maine. Her deadbeat ex-husband’s alimony checks don’t come as often as they’re supposed to, so when her boss, Sal, offers her a weekly cooking column for extra money, she finds it hard to say no.

Her food is always a hit with family and friends, but Hayley isn’t really a writer, so she’s plagued with self-doubt. Her insecurity isn’t helped by Sal taking a strong dislike to her chatty debut. When positive reviews start pouring in, however, even he’s won over to her conversational writing style.

One person who isn’t happy about Hayley’s success is Karen Applebaum, the food-and-wine columnist at the rival paper. Part of her anger stems from her certainty that Hayley stole her crab-stuffed mushroom recipe for Hayley’s first column. Of course, Hayley didn’t, but Karen’s revenge culminates in a bake sale food fight that has Hayley loudly proclaiming before dozens of witnesses that she will kill Karen.

These are rash words that mean little—until Karen turns up dead and Hayley becomes the prime suspect. For all that Karen wasn’t well-liked around town, no one else seemed to have disliked her enough to want her dead, much less make public death threats against her. When Hayley realizes that she’s being framed, she goes all out—with some help from her friends—to bring the real killer to justice.

Death of a Kitchen Diva is a light-hearted romp of a culinary cozy, as Hayley and her friends and family dash around Bar Harbour investigating Karen’s murder. Hayley is a very relatable protagonist with a delightfully quirky and diverse supporting cast. I also really enjoyed the format of her columns, which are included in their entirety in the book. She lays out a seven-course meal over as many weeks, leading into each recipe with charming anecdotes regarding her life as a mom and pet owner and murder suspect. Cocktail recipes often accompany each course.