Murder by Cheesecake Blends Cozy Nostalgia and Cozy Mysteries into One Excellent Read

Picture it: the ladies of the lanai in a cozy mystery novel. As a Golden Girls fan, I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw Murder by Cheesecake by Rachel Elkstrom Courage at a bookstore and knew this was something that I needed to read.

This first installment of the Golden Girls series finds Rose struggling to plan a traditional St. Olaf wedding for her niece, and Dorothy experimenting with a VHS dating service in the attempts to get a date for the wedding. The date gets bad when her date leaves Dorothy right at the table, only to be found a few days later in the freezer. The police have their sights set on none other than Dorothy Zbornak, as he has her information stored in his pocket when he was found.

The girls put on their detective hats to figure out who the true killer is to prove Dorothy’s innocence, all while helping Rose pull of a traditional St. Olaf wedding right in Miami.

This book was definitely enjoyable to read. I’ve been a fan of the Golden Girls since I was 10 years old and watching that with my grandparents. So needless to say, I went in with high hopes. That being said, there were moments when I was reading this book that I can hear the voices of characters saying the dialogue. There were times that I was literally laughing out loud while reading this book.

I want to add that I’m sure that the writing for this was challenging, because if you’re using such a cult class show like the Golden Girls as the stage for a cozy mystery scene, then it is definitely challenging to do it justice. However, Courage did an excellent job with the characters and trying to do a plot was believable to how they were on the show.

Like many of these murder mystery novels, the story all wrapped up by the end of the book. The novel was cheesy at points, but I honestly think for something like this it worked.

I also think like many cozy mystery series, the books will get better and better as time goes on. This is challenging to say, because this book was already so good and hard to put down because it was exactly as comforting as watching an episode of Golden Girls.

I can’t wait for the next installment of this series.

Rating: 9.5 out of 10