With its fun storyline and engaging group of recurring characters, it’s time for book club!

Bakeries and Buffoonery is the fourth book in author Elizabeth Pantley’s delightful Magical Mystery Book Club series. The book club characters from the previous story return in this one, and it was like visiting with old friends. Each outing further develops the growing relationships among the group while continuing with its ensemble-style story delivery. It is another fun adventure for the book club members and greatly adds to our understanding of the club itself.

With Atticus joining the group and delving into the book club’s past, readers are treated to some of his findings during the day’s first club meeting. His presentation on his discoveries serves as an excellent explanation of how the library and club work. Paige also reminisces about her great-grandmother, GeeGee, finding her “forever book” and leaving the club to live out her life in another place and time. Her thoughts were bittersweet, and I knew we were preparing for another club member to do the same.

In this book, the group is looking to prevent a murder rather than finding a body and investigating. To stop the killer, they must dive into the town of Frosting’s past and its wildly successful obsession, a highly competitive annual cake-baking competition. If you’re a fan of cake-baking television shows, this book is for you! The group researches, develops potential suspects, and even enlists the cooperation of the local investigator (who isn’t what he seems) to eventually get their answers.

It was fun to learn that in her life outside of book club, my favorite character, motorcycle-riding Vee, works in a bakery. If you’ve read any of the previous books in the series, you’re aware of how big a part food plays in the club’s activities, making this quite a revelation. So, when our literary travelers touch down in the small town of Frosting on the eve of their big cake competition kickoff, she steps up to lead the group’s culinary efforts. Under these circumstances, Vee really shines. Zell and Frank, although still their wise-cracking selves, mellow out in this latest adventure, allowing for a more balanced focus on all the characters.

The Great Cake Rivalry proves to be another paranormal cozy mystery adventure for the book club but with a fun twist. While this allows the book’s characters to see and accept Frank as a talking cat, the club members are surprised that not all of Frosting’s residents can see or hear Mollie, the young ghost. I won’t reveal the reason behind this twist but suffice it to say, the book they’ve chosen introduces a cool change to the range of paranormal beings they’ve encountered thus far.

With its fun storyline and engaging group of recurring characters, I recommend BAKERIES AND BUFFOONERY to cozy mystery readers who enjoy a touch of the paranormal in their stories and to fans of the previous books in the series.

I voluntarily reviewed this after receiving an Advanced Review Copy from the author through Great Escapes Virtual Book Tours. ( )

If a supernatural Great British Baking Show is your thing this is the perfect book for you! Take a baking competition, toss in some fantastical fairies and mix with murder and you’ve got the latest installment of the Magical Mystery Book Club. I would definitely recommend reading the earlier books in this series to get a sense of who these characters are as you jump right into the story and if you’re not sure of the back story you can feel a bit disconnected and lost even as they grow on you. ( )

This series is so much fun and leaves me with a smile on my face. The antics of the zany cast of characters will have you chuckling.

This is a magical book club. As they read the first page of their selected cozy mystery book, they are transported into the book and become part of the story. They can only return home once they solve the mystery and declare it THE END.

In this latest book in the series, the members of the book club choose a book titled “The Great Cake Rivalry” and find themselves in the small town of Frosting, a town where the love of cakes is an obsession. At the town’s Annual Cake Competition, the local bakeries compete for an amazing prize package in a week-long festival. The competition is fierce. So fierce that someone has committed murder at each event for the past few years. The book club members are determined to find the killer and prevent a murder at this year’s event.

I love this quote from the book: “We all got up together and marched up the stairs. A line of seven people, a cat, and a ghost. A motley group who’d traveled to a magical place of adventures where we’d grown closer together, strengthened our team, solved the mystery, saved a town, and left a friend to find all her hopes and dreams.”

The story kept me guessing…and chuckling. Some of the residents of Frosting were utterly wacky. Descriptions of the spectacular cakes had me craving cake. Now I am eager to learn where the book club goes next.

I received a digital galley of this book. The opinions expressed here are my own. ( )