I picked up this book for two reasons: first, I read The Big Chili earlier this year and enjoyed it so much that I thought another chili book was a great idea; second, I've read the first book of another series by Kylie Logan (Mayhem at the Orient Express) which I also found very enjoyable.
Then I was confronted with the main character, Maxie Pierce, who appears to be dumb as a post. She annoyed me, because, you know, women main characters ought to be smart. By halfway through the novel, I realized that I was being prejudiced. Maxie had a father who was always on the make. Even though she loves him, he is a charming philanderer at the very least. Needless to say, her parents are divorced and her mother hasn't had much good influence on Maxie either. How do you learn life skills if no one is role modeling for you? And it turns out that Maxie is smart, but no one has taught her how to focus.
Most cozy protagonists are written as mystery readers. They know how the story is supposed to go. Maxie is more a drinking, smoking, and partying kind of girl. So she has a reputation to work against when a murder is committed in a nearby trailer. She has never applied herself to anything and has a lot of catching up to do. Mind you, she's still impulsive and tempermental, prone to doing boneheaded things without considering how things might end.
Her half-sister Sylvia is stuck up in much the way I was at the beginning of the book. Maxie doesn't help things any by shirking work and making it obvious that she considers herself the more attractive of the two. But Sylvia has business skills and knows how to look professional, things that Maxie needs to learn.
The mystery is decent and the solution makes good sense. If you'd asked me during the first 50 pages, I would have told you this would be the last book of this series that I'd read—one and done. But now I find myself wondering where the women's wandering father is, whether security guard/former cop Nick is going to be a love interest for Maxie eventually, and what will happen when Sylvia and Maxie rejoin the Chili Showdown. Consider me interested.
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