This was an enjoyable story but a little too drawn out for me. I thought it was pretty obvious who was guilty as there was quite an obvious omission of looking at that person and the things around them even though they were continually mentioned so it didn't have the same "oh my god" moment as other books which let it down.

Paul Delamare, chef needs to work and loves to teach.
But when his friend, the celebrity chef Christian asks him to help he encounters more problems than he envisaged, not least the murder of his friend.
Paul needs to find out who did it because it seems like the police are looking to blame him.
I liked the style of the book, with a chatty tone that gave lots of information without being a narrative. This is the first in a series and I would be interested to find out more about the narrator as well as enjoying the mystery!

I had read about half of this book before I twigged where I knew the author’s name from. This is his fiction debut, but I have a treasured copy of A Table in the Tarn that I bought in 2008 when I had a house in France.
Back to this book though. It is a very fine debut thriller. The book is very well written and pacy, as you’d expect from a very experienced journalist and the plot is quite tricky to solve. I did get part of it in the end, but this did not detract from my pleasure in reading it. Cooking and a thrilling plot! What more could I ask for? Well maybe a sequel and I understand that that will be coming next year.

I enjoyed reading Knife Skills for Beginners. Love the story and the setting of the book like the cooking school and the not so lovable characters and I enjoyed the ending that I didn't expect.

Christian was a ‘tv’ chef who was due to give a cookery school presentation but broke his arm so his friend Paul takes his place. However Paul discovers Christian murdered. He then tried to solve it but gets arrested as his fingerprints are discovered at the scene. Hardly surprising but other things finally come to light and it’s a fabulous whodunnit and why they dunnit!

An enjoyable read. Intriguing storyline.. Well written. A good holiday read. .This book could be a success..

I enjoyed this more as I read it. At first I wasn't really interested in the characters. Paul, as the stand in teacher of the cookery school seemed a bit flat. However, as the story developed he became more likable.
What shines through in this book is the knowledge that the author has of both cookery and magazine publishing. At times it felt like being on the cookery course.
I had no idea of the murderer until close to the end which was great.

Thank you to NetGalley for giving me the opportunity to read this book.

Chef, Paul, agrees to help his friend, Christian, to teach at an exclusive cookery school in Belgravia. All seems well, until Murder comes on the menu.

This is the first I’ve read from this author, and it did not disappoint. This was a cosy crime type book, and I love those and read them regularly. The story wasn’t boring, and felt like it raced ahead. There were lots of twists and turns, and was engaging until the very last page. I really liked the characters, and felt Paul was completely relatable. The author managed to get the right balance of tension and fun throughout. An excellent read, especially for readers who enjoy the cosy crime genre.

A fabulously written story that was a pleasure to read. I would absolutely recommend this book, it was brilliant

I have to admit, I did struggle with this book at first and that was because I found the characters so pretentious and unlikeable. Any one of them was likely to be bumped off. I'm glad I persevered, however, and enjoyed the read. I felt that the author had deliberately written the characters that way. I had a lot of the plot worked out but there was a nice little unexpected twist. Just one thing, I hated the texts with emojis and felt they added nothing. Maybe, that's a generational thing.

I’ve been looking for further enjoyable cozy crime mysteries ever since reading the Thursday Murder Club and have finally found one! I liked the main character Paul’s sarcastic sense of humour and relationship with bubbly best friend Julie. The twist was a little unbelievable for me but I feel I can forgive the author as I so enjoyed the rest of the book.

Thank you Netgalley, Orlando Murrin and Random House for this ARC.

Really interesting storyline, great characters but for me just too many of them , I kept forgetting who was who . That said that is just a personal thing, overall very well written and an unexpected ending.

Enjoyable, easy but probably forgettable read. Set in a residential cookery school with notions. Christian is in need if a stand in chef when he breaks his arm and he asks Paul to stand in. Takes a while to warm to the many characters in this book and sometimes hard to empathise with Paul as he opens his mouth and becomes prime suspect.
Many thanks to Netgalley gor the ARC in exchange for my honest review

Many thanks to the author publisher and Netgalley for a free ARC of this ebook.
I love a cosy mystery and when food, recipes and celeb chefs are involved, I was hopeful that this was the book for me.
I wasn't disappointed, it was a fun read with a(very) large cast of mis-fits who provide all sorts of red herrings and misdirection. The number of characters was quite daunting in the beginning, trying to decipher who was whom. It became easier as the plot unfolded. I enjoyed this book and look forward to the next in the series.

It should have been an easy job for chef Paul Delamare, to teach for a week in a residential cokkery school in Belgravia, as a favour for his old friend Christian. But when the unthinkable happens and a dead body turns up on the first night, the police is convinced Paul is the killer. If he can't prove his innocence fast, his goose will be truly cooked...

This was an entertaining read. I particularly liked the energy of the ending.

I was drawn to this book by the cover as it looks like (and is) a cozy mystery. It took me a while to work out who everyone was as there is a large cast but it turned out to be an easy holiday read. The action takes place in a cookery school, with the main character being the temporary tutor - an easy touch who finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. There were parts where his lack of assertiveness was frustrating but on the whole, a light, quick read.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for an ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

I love Masterchef so a cosy crime written by a previous semi finalist was always going to appeal to me.

I really enjoyed this. It’s written in the first person and Paul, the narrator has a fabulous chatty voice. I imagine him a bit like Alan Carr in my head! The story is set in a residential cookery school in Belgravia and I liked the whole posh vibe - it reminded me a bit of Jilly Cooper but without the sex and horses.

The plot was clever and moved along quickly. I enjoyed all the cooking references and recipes scattered throughout - I’m definitely going to try and make thunder and lightning cake one day.

I had absolutely no idea who ‘dunnit’ but I did feel like there were plenty of generous clues given and if I were better at remembering who people were and making a note of things maybe I would have worked this one out.

I generally like my crime a little more dark and gritty and my detectives a bit more flawed which is why this isn’t a five star read for me - I think cosy crime fans will find it a great example of the genre.

A very entertaining, light-hearted story, which certainly kept me turning the pages. The characters are good, and I enjoyed the recipes.

For the most part this was a decent enough read, plenty of red herrings and everyone having a reason to kill the first victim, but it is let down by its ending, In the interest of not giving anything away I won’t say what happens but to me it felt as though at least one chapter was missing.

Chef Paul Delamare's old friend Christian asks him for a favour. Christian has run into some trouble, resulting in a broken arm, and needs Paul—also a professional chef—to take over his stint at the posh cookery school where he works. Paul agrees, but when a murder is revealed at the school, he's pulled into a situation full of all kinds of unexpected danger. Against the background of Belgravia and a colourful lot of cookery students, Paul decides to solve the murder himself.

I love that this book contains actual, usable recipes. They add an element of fun. It's very clear that the writer has a serious background in cookery and knows what he's talking about. I enjoyed learning little tidbits about cooking and baking along with the students.

While I very much enjoyed reading a book with a protagonist in his 40s, Paul starts out relatively blank. He's a chef, he's gay, he's mourning his recently deceased husband. He has a sparkly best friend names Julia he also works with. But his personality doesn't really bloom until much later in the story, which made it hard to engage with him at first. As the story progresses and he starts interacting with the police, his sarcastic humour becomes evident and I began liking him, but it took quite a while.

The same goes for the other characters: they begin as ciphers, cartoonish "types": the posh snob, the purple-haired rebel, the animal-print wearing acidic housewife, etc. Over the course of the story, we learn more about them and they gain depth and complexity and this is clearly a choice made by the writer. We're asked to realise that appearances can be deceiving and there's always more to a person than seems obvious on the surface at first. But for the first half or so of the book, I assumed I was reading something with one-dimensional characters. I persevered, but other readers may not.

I would have liked a lot more visual description, especially of the cookery school building itself. 90% of the story took place within its walls, to the extent that it started to feel a bit claustrophobic, and I was never really able to picture the settings. I would have liked the building to feel more like a vivid characters in the novel.

I was frustrated by not understanding or believing a lot of Paul's choices. Why did he put pasta in his pocket? Why did he take it upon himself to solve the murder when the police were on the job? He was friends with the victim, but not close enough that he'd have a real emotional imperative to spend so much time investigating and interrogating the students. He didn't have enough of a personal stake in seeing the murderer brought to justice until the end. I also didn't buy that he'd not be more persistent in finding out how much he was going to be paid for the job or that he'd just shrug it off when he finally found out.

The prose was fine, if a bit broad and spare. There were some fun characters who eventually became more interesting, and Paul was sympathetic enough by the end, but ultimately the story was forgettable. The eventual solution to they mystery and reveal of the killer was irritating and silly. The killers' motivation wasn't believable and the story behind it didn't feel integrated into the larger themes of the story. After persevering through what didn't feel like an deeply engaging narrative, I was disappointed by the ending.