Who doesn't love coffee? Every country and/or culture is into some kind of coffee drinking, as far as I know. Coffee was a godsend while cramming for exams. Anyway, I would like to share this book (and hopefully the entire series), because of all the food-themed cozies I've read so far, this is the first one where the story revolves around coffee. Seriously. 
 Clare Cosi runs a really famous and really old coffee shop in Greenwich Village, New York called the Village Blend. She manages the operations as well as concoct the different varieties of coffee drinks they sell. Her quirky group of artists/baristas include Tucker, the gay theater enthusiast who also produces and performs, and Esther, the gothic and snarky graduate student who creates freestyle poetry. Her ex-husband, Matteo, who is also the one and only son of the original owner fondly called as "Madame", procures the beans from all over the world. Then she gets involved in her very first mystery when she finds her assistant morning unconscious, and apparently pushed down. 
 Cleo Coyle has a relatable heroine in Clare, and she made me fall in love with the Village Blend family - Madame, the barista mainstays Tucker and Esther, and even Matteo (sometimes). She also has effective red herrings; I wasn't able to pin the criminal down until the last few chapters. And like Brooklyn who has Derek, Clare has her own "knight in shining armor", Mike Quinn, the New York police detective with the intense blue eyes and an admirable passion for justice. I was rooting for the two of them to get together, because with all the crap they both went through in their personal lives, they deserve each other. 
 At the risk of repeating myself, the story revolves around coffee. It's not just because the crime happened inside the coffee shop, but more than that, Cleo Coyle manages to educate readers about the different kinds of coffee beans and their histories, and connect it in a wonderful way with the story without the coffee parts being like an information dump. More coffee, please!