When her mother’s cousin Jimmy falls ill, Marley takes leave from her job in Seattle to oversee operations at the pancake house Jimmy owns on the Washington coast. She plans to return to her real life soon, but then Jimmy is murdered and Marley finds herself not only an heiress but also an investigator seeking who killed Jimmy and why.
Being the first in a series, The Crêpes of Wrath has a number of characters being introduced to Marley’s life. Some are memorable, but others are not; unfortunately the murderer is among those who are not. Although the murderer’s motive is explained, it felt weaker than that of some of the red herring suspects. And while Sarah Fox created an interesting plot, there’s a lot of Marley making bad decisions to keep the story moving forward. For example, Marley doesn’t leave a message for the sheriff because she doesn’t want to “play phone tag.” Why not? It only makes sense to leave a detailed voicemail so law enforcement gets the pertinent information far sooner than whenever Marley gets around to making the call again. Additionally, there were a number of filler-type scenes (it was entirely unnecessary to spend time interviewing potential employees for the restaurant) that might work once the series is further along and the reader cares about recurring secondary characters.
About the audiobook: The Crêpes of Wrath by Sarah Fox is read by Marguerite Gavin. Gavin set the right tone for the novel and changed the sound of her voice enough to distinguish between characters. One quibble: Gavin pronounced UW (as in the University of Washington) as U-Double U rather than U-Dub as an alum (which Marley is) would. The audio version was published July 2017 by Tantor Audio and runs 7.5 hours.
3/5
Review copy provided by Audiobook Jukebox.
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