Soul of a Killer

Books and Biscuits Mystery Series, Book 2

By: Abby Collette

Narrated by: L. Malaika Cooper

In this mouthwatering cozy mystery series, fraternal twins Keaton and Koby are trying to run their combined soul food cafe and bookstore, but they find themselves searching for a cold-hearted killer.

Keaton and Koby are fraternal twins who were separated as children, but now they've found each other and opened Books & Biscuits in the pleasant Pacific Northwest town of Timber Lake. Business is booming, but even so, trouble always seems to find them.

Mama Zola, Koby's devoted foster mom, has taken up residence in Timber Lake. She and Pete, one of the bookstore's quirky employees, bring a peach cobbler over to her church's potluck, and then someone who sampled the cobbler is found dead. Mama Zola and Pete find themselves suspects in the murder, but luckily Koby and Keaton are ready to sling out a side of justice.

©2022 Shondra C. Logino (P)2022 Tantor

This is a whole mystery series for Netflix or BET +

I love this series and I hope there is another to come. They’ve come so close to learning about their birth mother that it’s a whole series in and of itself ! Mama Zola is my spirit animal ….here me when I tell you ! She is the OG of all OG’s !!!

Fun and Entertaining

Soul of a Killer is a fun and entertaining cozy mystery with engaging characters and an entertaining plot. I look forward to the next book.

I absolutely love this series!

I absolutely love this series! Koby is so sweet and smart, Keaton is lovable but dingy. This book is my favorite of the two so far although I liked the first book too. I hope the author continue with this series and that Keaton and Koby find their birth mother.

Very cute cozy!

I really loved the first one and this book (the second) didn't disappoint. The killer is who you least expect. Just enough suspense and action, but very light hearted. Hoping one of the main characters gets some romance in the 3rd one, which I hope is coming soon.

Great series. Hope it cony

I love the back story of twins separated and the personality of all of the characters.

Makes me happy

I love this book. I really like the relationships between the characters especially the sister and brother and the fact that this is a good old fashioned who don’t it that doesn’t keep you up at night with a lot of gore and I can relate too the people around the characters.

Love the characters

I enjoy the series and characters. The narration makes it a difficult listen. You can tell when the narrator is holding their nose to change a voice.

I Could Not Finish

I really liked the story idea behind this series and so I decided to listen to the first book “Body and Soul Food”. While the story seemed intriguing, the two main characters were hard for me to get behind once the story progressed and the mystery got underway. They were the stereotypical male and female characters. Koby (male) was strong, observant and confident, smart and social. Keaton (female) was an introvert, who only observations had to do with peoples outfits. She was also smart but sheltered which tended to make her do stupid things. He was calm and collected and she tended towards the hysterical. The first book was a bit of a slog until the last quarter of the book where things got better – enough so, I decided to try this book.

I thought that because the first book ended a bit stronger than it started, the second book might be better, I was wrong. Instead, the characters seemed to have gotten worse (especially Kobe). Kobe became across as down right obsessive and pushy. He seemed to lack boundaries when it came to questioning people and he decided he could bulldoze people into answering his questions. He acted like a crazy person. Keaton was back to her somewhat hysterical right from the beginning although she did seem to realize that her brother was often going to far with his actions and did her best to stop him.

The final straw for me was when Koby decided to continue to harass people at Mama Zola's church and went to the pastors office. Keaton tried to get him to stop but he insisted. When he got to the office there was a woman crying and he just walked in. Keaton, thinking him crazy, stayed outside. She could see the woman crying because the door was slightly ajar, but there was also another woman Keaton could not see behind the door she could not see - and the first thoughts that popped in Keaton's head was “I wonder what she is wearing” – really? This is what is important to you? It just seemed so unbelievably shallow and again such a stereotypical "girl" thought I rolled my eyes and could only get through a little more of the book before I just gave up. I knew with these two main characters I was not going to enjoy the journey.
I will say the other characters like Mama Zola, Pete etc... I did not mind. They were entertaining. I just could not get behind Keaton and Kobe.

What made this book worse was L. Malaika Cooper's narration. She was truly awful. Maybe if I would have read the book Keaton would not have come across as so hysterical, but when Ms. Cooper read her parts she always seemed to talk in a high panic ridden voice. The rest of the voices were not much better- She just does not have range.

I honestly wanted to like this book, and I know many people did- but this was just not for me. I needed Keaton to be a little more grown up and use her smarts and I needed Kobe to be less pushy and creepy.