Book Review: A Poisonous Pour (Cece Barton Mystery, #3) by Maddie Day

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Book Cover of A Poisonous Pour by Maddie Day
A Poisonous Pour (Cece Barton Mystery, #3) by Maddie Day opens with the city of Colinas, California celebrating Memorial Day weekend with various activities including a car show and picnic. While co-sponsoring a booth at the car show with local mechanic Josie Jarvin, Cece witnesses one of the attendees, Regan Greene, getting into multiple arguments with others. Aside from that, everything goes well. That is until the next morning when the town finds out that Regan is dead, and it looks like she was murdered. With multiple people having motives, Cece utilizes her amateur sleuthing skills to find out who actually committed the dirty deed.

I was approved for and received a digital copy of an Advanced Readers Copy (ARC) of A Poisonous Pour by Maddie Day from NetGalley and Kensington Publishing. A huge thank you goes out to both for providing me a copy for free in exchange for my honest opinion.

Maddie Day's Cece Barton series has become one of my favorite cozy mystery series, and I absolutely love the majority of the characters because they're so likable. The author always does a nice job of wrapping up the story in a nice way without leaving the reader with a cliffhanger ... cliffhangers are the worst! A Poisonous Pour is no different than its predecessors. Of course, there's always going to be a character or two that isn't likable, and those characters happen to be Regan Greene and the mayor. There might even be one or two more in addition to those characters.

Various Book Covers of the book A Poisonous Affair by Maddie Day
Several characters have motives for murdering Regan Green, but most of them didn't seem big enough to justify them taking a life.  Dane in particular was someone that I ruled out early on even before knowing what her beef with the victim was. There was one particular character that I started suspecting because he was consistently gone and wouldn't answer calls or text messages ... Richard's nephew. Another person I strongly considered was Mayor Guittierez since she had the biggest history with the victim. Was I right in my assumptions? You'll have to read A Poisonous Pour to find out for yourself.

The plot unfolds at a slower pace much like small town life does. That said, the story is genuinely engaging and held my attention. It's more of a slow burn, so readers expecting something more action- packed may find it lacking. Really getting to know the characters and seeing how they live is what the real appeal to me ... the setting felt so vivid that I found myself wishing I could be a part of it.

Overall, I found A Poisonous Affair by Maddie Day to be an absolutely enchanting, breezy read that I couldn't put down. Five out of five stars is what I rated this latest installment in the Cece Barton Mystery series. The expected publication date is April 28, 2026.

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