Brewed Awakening

Cleo Coyle can always be counted upon to deliver much more than a murder mystery and a few recipes. This husband-and-wife team, true professionals both, know their craft and how to use it to draw you into the world they create.

This one starts out with the main protagonist, Clare Cosi, suddenly losing her short-term memory. She wakes up on a park bench, having forgotten all of the last fifteen years of her life. To her mind, she has just gone through a difficult divorce, leaving her and her eleven-year-old daughter to pick up and reshape their lives.

I once suffered a head injury with short-term memory loss. The authors do a superb job of conveying the lost feeling of suddenly not knowing what you do every day, who you can trust, how you relate to the people in your life, your place in the current world–all the things you rely on to function. Clare must use her basic character strengths – without even knowing what those are – to escape being ensnared by people who want to use her memory loss to achieve their own goals, regardless of the cost to Clare.

I dont know how the authors do it, but they seem to up their game with each book. This one is the best yet, really difficult to put down and impossible to stop thinking about.

As a dedicated fan of Cleo Coyles Coffeehouse Mysteries, I jumped into Brewed Awakening the day it was released. While I see some structural problems with it, I still turned pages rapidly and stayed up late to finish it. The book opens with Clare waking on a park bench with no memory of the last fifteen years of her life. Much of the first half or so of the book is taken up with Clares friends and family trying to jog her memory while keeping her out of the clutches of a suspect psychiatrist who wants to institutionalize and isolate her. Gradually the story comes outClare and Annette Brewster, owner of an upscale Manhattan hotel, were kidnapped at gunpoint. Clare escaped, but days later Annette is still missing. Matt Allegro, Clares ex whom she remembers too well, and Mike Guinn, the fianc she doesnt remember at all, quarrel and snipe at each other as they work to restore her memory and at the same time find Annette. Along with Clare, they uncover murders and survive hair-raising scenesuntil they seem trapped by the villain. Some of the intricacies of the plot require either a sound knowledge of New York law or a willing suspension of disbeliefI chose the latter and was sorry to finish the book and leave Clares world, with Matt, Guinn, Madame, Joy, and the baristas. As always, coffeehouse recipes are a bonusMatts Coffee Beef Stew and Cacio e Matteo particularly struck me.

This is one fabulous book!! In fact, this series is just plain terrific. I love the writing style, the characters, the plot lines, the settings, everything. Every time I reread any of these books (and I have read them all several times) I am transported back to the Village Blend–the writing is so good I feel like I am right there with these people, and I don’t even like coffee!! All the characters are wonderful, and I appreciate the fact that they are all so different in age, background, personality, etc., yet they all come together to form this unique community of people who love and care for and support each other. Every character is important in these books, no matter how small their role is, they all add so much to the story.
In this particular book Clare wakes up on a park bench not knowing how she got there or why. We find that she has amnesia, that 15 years is missing from her memories, and this book deals with her journey back to the present. I don’t want to give anything away, but her journey back makes for great storytelling with all that happens along the way.
I (we) all waited quite a few months for this book to come out, and I can honestly say it was worth the wait. This is definitely the best book yet in this series, I couldn’t put it down, it made me reread yet again the other books in the series, and I am anxious to read the next chapter in the lives of Clare, Mike, and the rest of the Blend family .

I was unfamiliar with this series. I read the description of the book and decided I wanted to read it. I’m glad I did. I was able to pick up on who the characters were and their relationship to each other easily. The further into the book I got, the more involved in the storyline I became.
Clare wakes up with the last 15 years of her life missing from her memory. Boy is that making things complicated. Especially when she agrees to treatment by a somewhat questionable Celebrity Doctor. With a friend abducted, Clare a witness with no memory of the incident, a fiance she doesn’t remember and a grown up daughter who is still a child in her mind, getting her memories back is of utmost importance with time being of the essence.
There is no shortage of suspects, theories or shady characters in this book. I kept coming up with my own theories throughout the course of my reading it, non of which were exactly right. Some came close, but close theories don’t count in a murder investigation you need facts.
I will most definitely be reading more of this cast of characters’ escapades.

Looks like this Cosi writing duo needed a break from the wedding planning and gave us um I uh, oh dear, what is this thing in my hand that is buzzing? where am I? instead. Not a bad thing at all because I cant quite imagine life at the Village Blend after the nuptials.

In this interesting mystery there is a better look into Madames friends and associates as well as s bigger than usual roles for her and Matt. Mike is more than arm candy too this time and we see new side of him that caught my memory off guard.

Shady docs and mysterious spaces contribute to this latest entry in the series. Enjoy!