Combine The Great British Bake Off with Agatha Christie, and you might end up with something like this book, about a girl in a baking competition who must figure out who tried to murder one of the celebrity judges.
Laila is an expert baker; Lucy a budding journalist. They’ve been friends since second grade, but are destined for separate high schools, unless they can both get scholarships to the prestigious Sunderland boarding school. Laila needs the scholarship because after her dad died, her mother has struggled to cover the family’s financial needs; Lucy’s parents likewise can’t afford the tuition.
Their opportunity comes when Laila is invited to compete at the Golden Cookie competition, held at the school, with a scholarship going to the winner. Lucy wrangles her way in to cover the competition, hoping her reporting will impress the school’s scholarship committee.
The two judges are a pastiche of celebrity chefs: Chef Polly feels like GBBO’s Prue Leith with a dash of Ina Garten, cheery and comforting, while Chef Remi has the French flair of Jacques Pepin but the highly critical attitude of Gordan Ramsay. When Chef Remi collapses after eating one of Laila’s cookies, however, Laila must fight off accusations that she tried to poison him, while she and Lucy race to discover who the real culprit is. They realize, however, that everyone has a motive for wanting to do away with the nasty Chef Remi, including the other young competitors, Chef Remi’s assistant Neal, and even the seemingly charming Chef Polly. The story becomes effectively a locked-room mystery when a storm brings a power outage, trapping everyone at the school. Can the two girls keep themselves from suspecting each other and find the real perpetrator before it’s too late? And will the debacle ruin their chances to get into the school together?
This is a delightful story, told in Laila and Lucy’s alternating perspectives, and blending both first-person narration and excerpts from their diary entries. It’s full of legitimate baking details (co-author Alechia Dow is a former pastry chef) and amusingly exaggerated characters (particularly the adults). Both Laila and Lucy are driven to succeed in their respective fields, but relatably far from perfect.
At the same time, the story weaves in some more serious topics. Laila knows she’s a suspect because she’s Black and financially insecure, noting, “People like me with brown skin and one parent who’s always working hard but still not covering the rent were always the first to be blamed.” Lucy, who is cued Latina, has been told by a classmate “that she and her parents should go back to their own country.” Chef Remi has both disparaged and appropriated cuisines of non-White cultures.
The queer content is slight, but one of the competitors has two dads (and a relative who has shown bias towards them), and two of the girls (not Laila or Lucy) are dating each other, but trying to keep it quiet since one of their mothers doesn’t approve. While the story doesn’t focus primarily on these micro- and macro-aggressions, they feel like (unfortunately) authentic parts of life for young people of marginalized identities growing up in the U.S. today, and do drive some of the characters’ actions.
Co-authors Dow and Tracy Badua keep the suspense high as they offer reasons for every character to be a suspect. Fans of mysteries and/or baking shows will likely love it, and should happily curl up with this fun and recommended tale (and a batch of cookies).
