Audiobook Review: On What Grounds by Cleo Coyle

On What Grounds
by Cleo Coyle (Compact Disc Coyle), audiobook narration by Rebecca Gibel

After several friends, with diverse reading interests, all recommended this series, I thought I’d give it a shot — especially since the libraries have them all as books-on-cd, which I can easily listen to via my car’s CD-player going to-and-from work every day.

First of all, I had avoided the Coffeehouse Mystery series mainly because I’m not a coffee drinker and I didn’t think I’d appreciate the setting and background of the characters. As it turns out, I really like the setting of The Village Blend coffeehouse — almost makes me want to try one of the Blend’s manager Clare Cosi’s elaborate coffee concoctions. In On What Grounds, the first entry in the series, Clare has returned to being the Village Blend’s manager after several years away, after being asked to by its colorful and intriguing owner, Madame — who also happens to be her ex-mother-in-law. Clare had divorced from Madame’s son, Matteo Allegro, and moved from Greenwich Village to the suburbs of New Jersey, to raise her daughter, Joy, as a single mother. Now, Joy’s in college, and Madame has lured Clare back to manage the Blend with a promise of part ownership. When one of the coffeehouse’s baristas is found at the bottom of a staircase after closing one night, Clare can’t accept that the fall was an accident. Detective Mike Quinn can’t officially condone her independent investigating, but at the same time, he can’t officially dig around into what has officially been tabled as an accident. So…Clare starts snooping — aided and abetted by her ex-husband, Matteo, a globe-trotting coffee buyer, whom Madame is also trying to reunite Clare with as someone else with an ownership stake in the Blend.

The characters are interesting and relatable, and the setting is rich with details. I now know more about how various coffee drinks are made than I’d ever heard before. Clare is a fun character, and her relationships with Madame, Matteo and Joy are all interesting, though I know (from reading jacket blurbs on future volumes in the series) that she and Detective Quinn are to become an item in later books. This audiobook’s narrator, Rebecca Gibel, does a marvelous job with this first volume, and I look forward to listening to more in this series, especially if she’s the reader.

[ official Coffeehouse Mystery web site ] | [ Cleo Coyle is actually the pseudonym for married co-authors Alice Alfonsi and Marc Cerasini ]

See Donna G’s review of Through the Grinder, 2nd in this series, on BookGuide in December 2009
See Marcy G.’s review of Brewed Awakening, 18th in this series, on BookGuide in March 2020

Recommended by Scott C.
Bennett Martin Public Library

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