Howdy, howdy! How’s everyone doing this wonderful Wednesday? Merry Christmas to those who celebrate! Happy holidays or just happy Wednesday to those who don’t! It’s the last Wednesday of December (and the year!), so that means it’s book review time! This month, I decided to go with a new cozy mystery book (there’s potential for a series, but it’s unclear if that’s the plan). Knife Skills for Beginners by Orlando Murrin was released yesterday (the 24th) from Kensington Books. As usual, I must thank them and NetGalley for access to an ARC in exchange for an honest and unbiased review. Let’s get to it!

Knife Skills for Beginners follows Paul Delamare, a chef who recently lost his husband and is currently in “avoid all things” mode. When an old friend (Christian) recruits him to help out at a cooking school, Paul hems and haws, but eventually gives in. What’s the worst that could happen? Being in the frame for his friend’s decapitation is apparently one of those worst case scenarios. Rather than go down for murder, Paul decides to try to solve things on his own, but the deeper he gets, the more he regrets his impulsive choices. Especially deciding to take the job in the first place.

The plot is pretty standard, but it’s one of those books that throws every trope into the story and just kind of hopes it works out. It doesn’t. Everything is muddled together and convoluted and I’m still not entirely sure about what happened. Christian’s broken arm, for instance. Was it from a fall or was it broken on purpose or what? We get a few scenarios about what might have happened, but no clear answer in the end. The whole plotline with Paul’s stepson was useless. It didn’t move the plot forward and there was no resolution of it in the end. His introduction could have waited until he was going to play an active part in the story (maybe the next book). The two tiny things he did could have been accomplished a number of ways without muddying the actual plot of the book. It was an overly complicated story when it shouldn’t have been, so it was disappointing.

As far as the characters go, they aren’t great. Paul is basically a caricature of a gay man. He’s borderline absurd. I wanted to like him, but he didn’t feel real. The other characters were flat and lacked personality. They all sounded and behaved the same, so I had difficulty keeping track of who was doing what. The only reason I could keep track of the murderer was because it’s exactly who you should expect it to be if you’ve read any cozy mysteries at all. Yes, there’s a twist you’ll see coming as well, but only because it’s a typical one, not because the character was fleshed out and subtly hinted at.

There’s also a lot of continuity errors that muddle things even more. I normally don’t mention minor errors (typos, dropped words, extra words, etc.) because ARCs aren’t the final, polished versions, but these were glaring errors that would take another round of decent edits to fix. The final fight scene made no sense half the time. It was pretty clear that the author decided to take certain scenes in different directions, then forgot to go back and weave everything together. I hope these are fixed before the final release, but I’ve rarely seen it this poorly edited in an ARC that wasn’t from a self-publishing author, so I have doubts.

The writing is fine as far as rhythm and pacing goes. It’s a quick read despite the convolutedness of it. As per food themed cozies, there are some working recipes (stuff you’re supposed to actually be able to make), but none of them were particularly tasty sounding. I just didn’t get into it the way I was hoping to.

Ultimately, I didn’t care for Knife Skills for Beginners. I had no idea the author was a famous chef (I don’t watch cooking competition shows), but it wouldn’t have helped even if I did. It’s a mediocre book at best and I probably won’t pick up any future books if this is a series.

Overall, I gave it 2 out of 5 stars. One and a half, really. If you just devour all things food cozy mystery, pick it up. Otherwise, it’s not going to hurt to give it a miss.