Title:	Murder Most Southern
	Author:	Sarah Osborne
	Published:	May 5, 2020, Lyrical Underground
	No. of Pages:	242
	Cover Price:	$15.95 Paperback, $7.19 Kindle

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The third installment of the Ditie Brown Mystery Series, Murder Most Southern, by Sarah Osborne, starts out with Lurleen, Ditie’s best friend, informing Ditie that she is a finalist in a cooking competition put on by famous television chef, Savannah Evans, and will be spending five days in a small town in Georgia. What Ditie doesn’t know, is that Lurleen grew up right around there, and is at first reluctant to accompany Ditie. However, Lurleen gives in, and once they are on their way, both women are excited to be in the competition. Unfortunately, Savannah’s husband is murdered, and then another murder happens during the stay. Savannah is worried about the financial difficulties that will come if she cancels the competition, so pushes to go on with the filming of the contestants.

While Osborne does a nice job of developing the characters, there are way too many. It’s hard to keep them straight, and it really isn’t necessary to fully develop everyone, even when they are very minor characters. The story is quite fun, but there seems to be too much going on and even though there are ups and downs and definitely building suspense, it is hard for readers to focus. Everyone seems to be a suspect. The competition segments are fun, and the recipes that are included at the end are fun, but Ditie’s two signature cookie recipes aren’t included, which is disappointing.

All told, this is a fun series, but it is not fast moving, and some of the characters are so selfish, readers may wish they weren’t there. Everyone loves southern cooking, so the food references are nice. There are lots of cozy culinary mystery series out there, and this isn’t good enough to be in the top echelon. Readers may want to read the series if they run out of everything else.

Special thanks to NetGalley for supplying a review copy of this book.