In this one though there are many troubles. One is that it is too long. Two, the plot is very confused with too many cases going on at once. There are puppy mills, stalking, stolen jewelry, an affair, a murder, unexpected wealth and trespassing all going on at once. It was confusing. The third problem is that I didn't like the characters. The story centers around Yolanda who is not likable. She whines, lies, and is generally unpleasant. She has a spat with a priest that makes no sense at all. Her Aunt Ferninanda is equally unpleasant. She takes out a cop's knees with a baton. The injury is serious enough to go to the hospital but everyone seems to laugh it off. Other absurdities occur with this character but I don't want to spoil it for you. There are so many people involved in this mystery that it feels that a scorecard is needed just to keep up with them all.

I love Goldy Schulz and her supporting cast of husband Tom, son Archie, and best friend Marla. Goldy and Tom's relationship reminds me of an episode of "I LOve Lucy" with Goldy getting into trouble and the Desi character, Tom, getting her out. In other words, just fun. I thought her hitting the policeman and then she and her neice crowing about it, was way over the top.

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Concerned for her friends, Goldy invites them to stay with her while the sheriff’s department investigates. Yet even Goldy’s house isn’t safe, and after a failed break-in by an unknown intruder a cop is sent to keep an eye on things. Then a second body is found. I'll start by saying that I did enjoy reading this book. It was a fast read and I found myself very entertained. I have never read another book by this author before and the lighthearted writing style was easy to read.

Four kids decided to form an unlikely group to study together for the SATs. Each one of them different in their thoughts and lives. Daisy. Jane. Leo. Max. Crunch Time is all about cooking creatively to help make a difference to the planet. No more shopping for ingredients to find out you had half of them in the fridge. Instead, you’ll make the most of what you have and swap ingredients you don’t have to make something deliciously odd. I received two books of this series from my mother's collection when she died last December, and liked those two so well that I filled in the entire series up to and including this book. I have just finished reading them all. I enjoyed the writing, and the mystery plots were well thought out.

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Multiple close-calls and injuries to the main character, ending with a final close call with death (and being hit by the butt of a gun at least once per book) What happened to authors doing research or at least using common sense when writing. Have you ever seen a person in a wheelchair try to cook in a regular kitchen? It is IMPOSSIBLE. They cannot reach the counters, let alone any shelves. That's why in handicapped accessible houses the kitchen counters are LOW. But we are expected to believe that Auntie F is cooking up elaborate dishes all night every night. In this book, the crime action comes right to Goldy's home, which makes for even more fun. Friends are staying with Goldy after their house burns down, and Goldy knows they are keeping secrets. She pushes her way in and tries to figure out how to help them, keep her business running and ensure her own home and family aren't impacted. But of course, Goldy falls prey to the culprit at one point, too.

Rao concludes by showing us how these gender dynamics play out in the decision-making surrounding household labour during the unemployment period. Women do much more household and childcare labour and men do much less (they, at best, ‘help’). Rao does an excellent job of painting a portrait of how this happens in families (even in families where women seek to avoid this labour). I also thought that Rao’s insight into how women’s time is used to save the family money (primarily via household labour), while the family spends money to place value on the husband’s time, was an important one. I do have some questions for future thought. I would have appreciated a bit more discussion about the length of unemployment, as it appears that most of the participants were among the long-term unemployed at the time of the first interview (and it appears from Tables 3 and 4 that, on average, the women had been out of work longer than the men). We know that long-term unemployment is quite a different experience than unemployment experiences that are less than six months long. We know less about whether the gendered dynamics change over time during the unemployment process, although my own recent research suggests that it does. Does the tolerance for unemployment further change/look different if it’s a woman’s or a man’s family who is judging the process? We could expect that it does, as research suggests that men continue to identify as workers even after long periods of unemployment, while research on unemployed women has found that they may retreat into their identities as mothers to protect them from the stigma of unemployment. Rao argues that time and again families ‘deploy gendered strategies’ in the wake of an involuntary job loss and unemployment experience. These strategies are deeply traditional, recalling the masculine breadwinner and feminine homemaker family structure (even in families that were not originally set up in such a way) as a way to re-affirm their social status, even as other aspects of their social status are lost. Law enforcement looking the other way as nosy main character breaks laws and illegally obtains information and evidenceJane: Daughter of a well-known actress. She tends to isolate herself from most after she finds out a friend was using her just because of her famous mother. She strives to belong to this group. The Vice-Chancellor of OP Jindal Global University, Dr C Raj Kumar praised the author of Crunch Time as "a brilliant mind, prolific writer and inspiring teacher who does not stop at academic writings but engages in public discourse through the popular news media." He called Dr Sreeram Chaulia "an inspiring teacher as well who has shaped the minds of hundreds of students at the Jindal School of International Affairs and thousands of young people in India and around the world through his discourses and writings on world politics."

Fantastic caterer she might be, but having a Goldy Shulz dinner might be your last. All she needed last time was a food fight to break out.Really,could more have gone wrong? Davidson has volunteered for numerous organizations. She was a tutor in a correctional facility, rape-victim counselor, and served for 10 years on the Board of Examining Chaplains of the Episcopal Diocese of Colorado. For years she taught the adult Bible study at her parish, where she was also licensed to preach. Crunch Time begins with the story of the Barons, a family in which Todd, the primary earner and breadwinning dad, had lost his job and is now seen as not ‘morally’ unemployed by his wife, Kimmie. To be morally unemployed, we learn, would be to be more dedicated (in a devotional sort of way) to the job search. Rao next introduces us to the Brozeks, a family in which Lisa, the primary earner and breadwinning mum, had lost her job, but whose unemployment is not characterised as a problem to be solved or as a moral failing, but as an ‘opportunity’ to figure out what should come next. While I enjoy the homey qualities of this series—Tom is so very patient and I just love the descriptions of the food that everyone creates in this story, I'm getting rather tired of Goldy. She's so nosy and I don't really see where she can really do that much anymore now that pretty much everyone in town knows about her detecting. I'm rather surprised that Tom hasn't dumped her for being such a pain. And I miss Julian. Nor was there much interaction with Marla or Archie; things are rather tame without the Jerk. Not that I didn't cheer when he died! This story just has a rather tired feel to it. Not helped at all by the evasions and actions of Yolanda and Ferdinanda. Crunch Time" is the fifteenth book in Diane Mott Davidson's Goldy Schulz series - a series that at this point I think I'm reading out of habit rather than enjoyment. While better than some of her more recent books (for example Sweet Revenge) it is not as good as the early books in the series. Some of the plot devices are stale at this point - for example you know that Goldy is going to get beat up or injured several times in the book. The things Goldy does to try to solve a mystery have always been a bit too much, but in this book she went way over the top (it amazes me how often her husband and the entire police force simply turn their heads as Goldy breaks law after law). The book also relies far too much on Goldy being in the right place at the right time (or is it the wrong place at the right time?) that puts her in the center of action and danger. Goldy's best friend Marla was barely in the book and while I hardly missed her, I did miss Julian's character quite a bit. His convenient absence seems to serve merely as a way to get Yolanda in the book. While she grew on me as a character, she felt awkwardly thrust into the book - Davidson tries to make it seem like she was always an important part of Goldy's life, but if she was in earlier books I don't remember her. As for the mystery - parts of it were very good, but there were so many things going on the book felt a bit convoluted. Finally, while the book is a good size, the ending still felt a bit rushed and Davidson left a few plot lines dangling.

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Tell me why I read books with settings similar to things I'm going through or thinking about at the time. Diane Mott Davidson's "Goldy Bear Culinary" mystery series is one of my early favorites, and I'm sad that the author isn't writing anymore. There were about 20 books in total, but this review is for #16, Crunch Time. This was the second or third cozy mystery series I took on, and only the second where I've been able to finish reading all books. (LJB's "Cat Who" series is the other one).