Brie Careful What You Wish For is the latest installment in the Grilled Cheese Mysteries, a cozy mystery series centered on grilled cheese restaurant owner Carly Hale, and the alarming number of dead bodies that keep turning up in her small town of Balsam Dell. This time around, Ross Baxter, a local teenager who runs a food delivery service bringing Carly’s grilled cheese creations to senior citizens, finds himself in trouble when one of his customers is murdered and Ross’s fingerprints are discovered on the murder weapon. Naturally, Carly can’t resist stepping in to uncover the truth and clear his name.
This is one of those cozy mystery series I’m quite invested in. Maybe it’s because the entire thing revolves around a grilled cheese eatery, which is honestly my idea of a perfect restaurant and something I very much wish existed where I live. But beyond the food, this series has a charm that keeps pulling me back.
Carly is a spirited, likable main character, and I genuinely enjoy the supporting cast as well. They all seem like the kind of people you’d actually want to hang out with. By now, Carly has developed a reputation as the town’s unofficial mystery solver, so when a murder occurs, everyone inevitably comes to her to ask questions and spill their secrets. Of course, her boyfriend and friends repeatedly urge her to leave the investigating to the police, but Carly simply can’t help herself.
One thing that did stand out to me, though, was Chief Holloway’s attitude in this installment. His behavior felt oddly out of character. He was unusually angry and adamant that Carly stay out of the investigation, snapping at her whenever she asked questions. In most cozy mysteries, there’s typically a detective who warns the protagonist not to snoop but ultimately just sighs and rolls his eyes when she does anyway. Chief Holloway’s outright anger felt more intense than usual and didn’t quite ring true for his character.
I also found myself wondering if this series has a new publisher. The book was released as a trade paperback rather than the usual mass market format, and the font was noticeably small and sometimes challenging to read. Because of this, many chapters were only two or three pages long. While the book clocks in at just 191 pages, it somehow felt closer in length to a standard novel.
Additionally, the pacing of this book felt rushed. We meet Ross in the very first paragraph, and the murder occurs within the first six pages, leaving little time to ease back into the world of grilled cheese or reconnect with familiar characters. There was also a significant amount of exposition, with repeated explanations of details that longtime readers would already know. It’s clear the author intended for this book to work as a standalone, but the constant rehashing did slow things down at times.
That said, I still really enjoyed the mystery itself and the cast of suspects. I didn’t guess the killer, but I had plenty of theories along the way. The mystery was thoughtfully constructed, and the author did an excellent job making nearly everyone feel suspicious, which kept me engaged right up until the reveal.
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