Paul Delamere is grieving the recent death of his partner Marcus, and is having some financial difficulties as well. When an old friend, celebrity chef Christian, breaks his arm and can't run an upcoming class at the expensive cooking school he works at, he asks Paul to step in at short notice. Paul agrees. At first, there's just the awkwardness of the school owner dodging discussion of Paul's fee, and the amateur culinary students being vastly diappointed they don't get charismatic celebrity Christian as their teacher. But when someone turns up dead, Paul's going to have to solve the murder to clear his own name...

Picked this up from the library new books section, and glad I did. I don't normally read contemporary mysteries, but this one was pretty good. 

I liked the obvious insider knowledge the author brought from his experience in both the cooking and magazine worlds - that part of the setting felt very authentic. I also liked Paul's platonic BFF Julie (though the emoji texts were cringe), and the way there wasn't a romance shoehorned in. Paul's grief for his partner was an important part of the book, and if the series continued I'd definitely want it to wait a little while before giving him a new romantic interest.

The pacing was sometimes a little bit uneven, and the stepson subplot didn't really work for me. It either needed to be cut or reworked. But overall this was a good debut and I enjoyed it. :)