Thank you to Kensington Books for giving me a digital galley of this book in exchange for feedback.

I've been looking forward to "Pies before Guys," because I've already read and enjoyed the previous books in Kirsten Weiss's "Pie Town" series. What I like about these books is that they're a little more youthful than most cozy mysteries. The stereotype is that cozy mysteries are written by and for old women, and I'm fine with that - no one enjoys watching an elderly nun and her cat solve a crime more than I do. But Weiss's "Pie Town" series is cozy mystery for millennials, and I am finding that I really enjoy the slightly-edgy-for-a-cozy-but-still-pretty-cozy tone of them.

In this volume, Val is hosting a poetry reading at Pie Town, facilitated in part by employee Abril, who is excited that her professor will be reading his poems there. The poetry is painfully bad, but when the professor is murdered just after the reading, the problem of bad poetry seems a little insignificant. Should Val investigate? Or should she leave it to her handsome boyfriend the detective, and keep her eyes on her pies? Not related to murder, is it really a good idea for Charlene to start a UFO hoax on YouTube involving branded pie plates?

I found that it took me a little time to get into this one, but by the time Val was digging in the Dumpster for a discarded and possibly important bad poem, I was all in for the Pie Town gang and the solution to the mystery.

Bonus points for included pie recipes, which I almost certainly won't actually cook but still enjoy seeing.