Review: Baker's Blues by Judi Hendricks

Baker's Blues

by Judi Hendricks

Publisher: Chien Bleu Press

Pages: 372
Format: ARC

Buy the Book: Amazon

Goodreads:  In Wyn Morrison’s world a 5 A.M. phone call is rarely good news. It usually means equipment trouble at her bakery or a first shift employee calling in sick—something annoying but mundane, fixable. But the news she receives on a warm July morning is anything but mundane. Or fixable.

Mac, her ex-husband, is dead.

He’s not just in a different house with another woman, but actually, physically gone. Ineligible for widowhood, Wyn is nonetheless shaken to her core as she discovers that the fact of divorce offers no immunity from grief.

As Mac's executor, Wyn is now faced with not only sorting his possessions and selling the house, but also with helping his daughter Skye deal with financial and legal aspects of the estate--a task made more difficult by Skye’s grief, anger and resentment.

Ironically, just when Wyn needs support most, everyone she’s closest to is otherwise occupied. Her mother and stepfather have moved to Northern California, her best friend CM has finally married the love of her life and is commuting to New York, and her protégé Tyler is busy managing the bakery and dealing with her first serious love affair. They’re all sympathetic, but bewildered by her spiral into sadness. After all, it’s been three years since the divorce.

On her own, she stumbles at first. For the last several years Wyn has been more businesswoman than baker, leaving the actual bread making to others. Now, as she takes up her place in the bread rotation once more, she will sift through her memories, coming to terms with Mac and his demons, with Skye’s anger, and with Alex, who was once more than a friend. Soon she will re-learn the lessons that she first discovered at the Queen Street Bakery in Seattle…that bread is a process--slow, arduous, messy, mysterious--and best consumed with the eyes closed and the heart open.


Kritters Thoughts:  A bakery in Los Angeles with a baker who's personal life implodes and she must take a break from the bakery to handle it all.  Wyn was a great character and the first few chapters showed the present day as she finds out that her ex husband and dies, but then the book quickly goes into the past and into their relationship as she reflects on how things went down hill and if maybe she could have made different choices.

This was for me the big theme.  You can reflect back on past relationships or just decisions and see if you could have done something differently, but you would have ended up somewhere different and is that a good thing?  I loved how the author gave the deceased ex husband some chapters to tell his side of the story and give the reader some context as to why he was acting the way he was while at the same time seeing Wyn's reaction to his actions.  

The third in a series and I wasn't aware when I agreed to do the tour, but I didn't feel like I missed too much by reading this out of order.  I absolutely wish I had started at the beginning, but am still motivated to go back and read the first two before I continue on, and I will continue on!  

I loved Judith Ryan Hendricks writing and it was easy to slip into Wyn's story and want to know what was happening from one chapter to the next.  Do we know if we are going to get another book in this series?


Rating: absolutely loved it and want a sequel

Disclosure of Material Connection:  I received one copy of this book free of charge from TLC Book Tours.  I was not required to write a positive review in exchange for receipt of the book; rather, the opinions expressed in this review are my own.