In Scene of the Grind by Tonya Kappes, Roxanne Bloom needs a change in her life after a bad divorce, so she has moved to Honey Springs, KY where she spent her summers growing up with Aunt Maxi. The town is getting ready to do a grand reopening of the boardwalk, and Roxy’s new coffee shop, The Bean Hive, will serve as one of the new shops. The only challenge is that Roxy’s young love, Patrick Cane, now owns the only construction company in town, the one in charge of the town renovations, and she can’t avoid him in such a small community. But Roxy’s new love is named Pepper, and he is a rescue dog Roxy’s new friend Louise talks her into adopting. Pepper takes to Patrick immediately when he shows up at the cottage Roxy is using and which needs new wiring.
The next morning, Roxie goes to take some coffee and a muffin to Alexis Roarke, Aunt Maxi’s enemy who owns the Crooked Cat Bookstore. But Roxy finds Alexis lying dead on the floor, with one of Roxy’s doughnuts lying next to her and Alexis’s “Banned” stamp inked onto her forehead. Soon the local police officer, Spencer Shepherd, has taken charge, and it appears that he suspects Roxy and her aunt. Things don’t get better when Leslie Roarke arrives. This abrasive daughter of Alexis wants the attention of both Spencer and Patrick and created longstanding conflict between them when she cheated on Patrick a few years earlier with Spencer. Soon Roxy decides she needs to put to work her investigative skills because Aunt Maxi may soon need her services as a lawyer instead of as a barista.
Scene of the Grind has an interesting plot with fun characters I connected with. The book is lighthearted and not as complex as Kappes’s Kenni Lowry Mystery series. The solution also seemed to have few advanced clues, making it seem to come out of the blue. I liked the way that we find ourselves questioning whether Patrick is a good guy or a bad guy and the fun interaction between Roxy and Maxi.
The audio edition of this book is performed by Madeline Mrozek. She uses effective voices for the various characters, though I found the voice used for Chrissie, Roxy’s best friend in Honey Springs, to be shrill and annoying. Otherwise, I liked the accents and the way Mrozek performs the book. One detail that did get annoying was that the book takes periodic breaks in the narration to give recipes. I generally don’t find recipes in audiobooks to be very effective, since I am not prepared to write down, memorize, or try out the recipes as I’m listening. But to break up the book by taking time to give recipes in the midst of the narration is distracting and not very effective.
Overall, I liked Scene of the Grind. It was a fun book to listen to, and I really appreciated the emphasis on adopting pets from the shelter to give them good homes. The book did not have the depth Kappes is capable of, but I had a good time. I give it four stars.
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