During my monthly video visit with my friend Ashleigh, she mentioned that she joined a new book club near her home in Michigan, where marijuana is legal (medical and recreational). For their next book club, they were going to read A Half-baked Murder by Emily George. I thought, hey, a cozy mystery for those who partake? Why not! I do not partake. I live in Indiana where everything that makes you happy is illegal, but not only that, I’m too paranoid to partake. Call me a square and blame it on Biscuit (that’s my mom, if you’re new here). But Ashleigh does partake and she’s cool as shit, so I said I would read George’s novel, too.

I assume A Half-baked Murder is set in the present, which would be the book’s publication in 2023. Chloe is twenty-eight, and the author, a self-proclaimed “elder Millennial,” said Chloe is one, too. Right away my feathers were ruffled. As a genuine elder Millennial, I wondered what this goofball born in 1995 was thinking. Everything she referenced about her high school experience was pop culture when I was in my thirties. I mean, it’s like, huge sigh. The book didn’t use “lol” once, and there was plenty of texting opportunities in the story. I was appalled.

Anyway, although Emily George is Australian, she decided to set her book in California, and given that she’s not sure what an elder Millennial is, I’m wondering if she knows what an Australian is. She does include one Australian character, who may as well have been Chris Hemsworth, if Chris Hemsworth worked in an office. The other characters even make fun of his accent and expressions, doing the whole “dingo ate my baby” schtick. I haven’t even described the plot yet, have I…..?

Chloe was born and raised in Azalea Bay, California, a made-up place but very beachy. After high school, she went to France to be a fancy pastry chef, got engaged, found her man cheating, dumped him, made one crap dessert, had it reviewed by a critic negatively, and came back to Azalea Bay totally defeated. Her purple-haired aunt convinces her what the market demands is not a new bakery in town, but a weed bakery. The market wants what it wants. Chloe is worried about the stigma despite using weed herself, feeding it to her grandma and a bunch of old ladies, and living in a state where it is legal.

If you want to read this book, I’ll skip to the point: George uses lots of romance tropes, so if you like these, you’ll love A Half-Baked Murder:

• Female protagonist of indeterminate size, but mentions having put on a few pounds since she worked as a pastry chef in Paris, so you can relate to her regardless of your size. Is she over 200lbs? Is she Bridget Jones fat at 135lbs? Who knows?
• Cool aunt with hippy vibes, has no children, lesbian-coded.
• Male protagonist, muscles bulge in t-shirt sleeves, constantly “raking” his hand through his hair.
• Fragile grandma for whom the protagonist would do anything; always understanding and never burdened by generational differences in attitude or perception.
• Cute pet that makes you squeee.

And then these are tropes listed on Evie Alexander’s website about romances that are too good to leave out:

• Everyone can see it (fits well with friends to lovers)
• Sworn off a relationship
• Is it all as it seems?
• Love at first sight/‘insta love’
• Return to hometown/reunion romance
• Broken in some way

For those who are wondering what the mystery is in A Half-baked Murder, a guy much hated by everyone is found in the park with a knife in his neck. All evidence points toward Chloe’s eccentric aunt, so Chloe is determined to figure things out because she doesn’t trust the police. Why do cozy mysteries rely on a nosy character who doesn’t trust detectives?? Everyone is telling Chloe to stop with her nonsense:

Aunt Dawn signed. “Stay out of it, okay? Let the professionals do their job. This is what they’re trained to do and I’m confident they’ll find who did it.”
I, on the other hand, wasn’t so sure. The fact that the detective had gone to my aunt so soon after reeving the footage from Jake told me they were looking very closely at her.

Chloe’s friend Sabrina says the same thing about letting the police do their job:

“That’s for the police to figure out.”
“I’m not sure I feel confident in their abilities.” I signed. “They seem fixated on my aunt, and if they’re tailing her…”
“You have to let them do their job, even if it means them looking at your aunt. She didn’t do it, so they won’t find concrete evidence against her.”

Chloe started irritating me with her insistence that she was going to solve a murder when nothing in her background or abilities suggested as much. In fact, she seemed much younger than her twenty-eight years as a result (never mind that she pleads her case to get a dog by saying things like she’ll actually walk it and pick up after it pleasepleaseplease). However, when the author comes up with something clever, it’s great. This sentence is wonderful: Chloe was “feeling slimier than a bag of past-its-prime spinach…” because she had to talk to the town’s gossipiest person. But a few witty lines can’t make up for a trope-filled plot.

Everything concludes happily ever after because it has to. I wish George had done away with the sleuthing and had Chloe focus on opening her new business instead of running around town chasing gossip. The weed bakery is what made the book sound interesting! The author gives you enough info to follow the process without betting bogged down:

“Weed backing is kind of a misnomer because you don’t bake directly with the weed in a lot of cases. Often, it’s infused into a fat like butter or oil and those items are used for the baking component after being decarbed—short for decarboxylation, which is the process of physically altering the chemical structure of the cannabis through heating, so it becomes psychoactive.”

Imagine if Chloe had gone through the process of opening the store, getting the bank loan and permits for having cannabis, taking care of her grandmother, and spending time with Mr. Sleeve Muscles like a normal person while feeling scared/threatened because a murderer is on the loose and the detectives are still working on it? I would have truly enjoyed A Half-baked Murder. Instead, I got I giant trope in 300 pages.