In Home Of The Braised by Julie Hyzy, the 7th in the White House Chef Mystery series, the White House chef gets herself in trouble once again. This time she was with Gus when they found bodies...at the home of Gus' friend. Once she gets herself out of the mess, and manages a dinner for 400 at the While house, she finally marries her Secret Service sweetheart. ( )

I love Ollie. She makes working at the White House sound like fun. This time the White House has added security, mercenaries that once operated in a foreign country with which the US is seeking peace. Only Ollie is sure something is wrong. As we always know, Ollie is always right. ( )

Home Of The Braised is the 7th book in the A White House Chef Mystery series.

Home of the Braised gives the reader a helping of cozy mystery, a generous portion of thriller and a pinch of romance to satisfy their reading appetite.

Things are really cooking in the White House kitchen these days. Chef Ollie and Gav, have gotten engaged and the country of Durasi has agreed to a peace settlement and a state dinner is being planned to honor it. And as if that isn't enough, thing continue to boil over with the First Families personal chef, Virgil, putting Ollie's staff on edge.

Ollie and Gav plan to have a private civil ceremony, but when applying for their marriage license they find that there is going to be a two month wait. Then Gav hears from a former agent, Evan, who has left the service to form a ministry to help the homeless and needs to talk to Gav. Gav thinks this may be the answer to their wedding dilemma. When Ollie and Gav arrive at his storefront church, things don't seem right. Soon they Evan and four others dead and a terrible chemical odor coming from the room. As they are hurrying to leave they are met by men in haz-mat clothing and are rushed to a waiting van and interrogated. Ollie soon learns that the men in the haz-mat suits are Secret Service agents. The first questions they have are: who were the other men with Evan and how did the Agents know to come dressed for a hazardous condition. As the investigation unfolds, Ollie has a couple close calls and it appears that the President's life is could also be danger.

Josh is back and helping in the kitchen once again and is quickly becoming an accomplished prep chef. Of course the kitchen wouldn't run as well if it wasn't for Cyan and Bucky. Plus the fact that they are always there for Ollie to keep her focused.

For those that read this wonderful series, you won't be disappointed and if you are new to the series, pick up the first, State of the Onion and begin to enjoy the exciting life of Chef Ollie Paras.

Recipes from the White House are included.

Definitely looking forward to the next book ( )

This series is the perfect example of a good-but-slow-to-start series. I read the first three and always thought they were good enough to pick up the next one, but I was never really invested in the characters.

Then the protagonist, Ollie, got a new love interest. I don't know why this made such a HUGE difference, but I could not put down the last four books; in fact, I read 4, 5 and 6 back-to-back last year. You might be thinking "well, the sex scenes must have been better", but there are zero sex scenes. In the last four books I think the author only mentions them kissing twice. In passing. But Ms. Hyzy does an outstanding job, IMO, of creating sexual tension without the sexual descriptions. Maybe it's just me.

Home of the Braised is a great entry in this fabulous series - the action and mystery start right away and Ollie is fighting battles on enough fronts to keep things busy without being overwhelming to the reader (if I were Ollie I'd be drinking heavily). There's a lot of detail about being a White House chef, but it flows nicely in the story and it's obvious the author has done her homework. The writing is smooth, fluid and without any oddities that jarred me out of the moment. Very little (if any) page filler disguised as internal speculation.

I don't really want to include much of a synopsis here because it all feels spoiler-y. Suffice it to say that there are threats to the presidency, the White House, national security and Ollie finds herself in the thick of it. If I had to complain about anything, I'd prefer the author didn't turn Ollie into a pariah; I know any real person involved in at least 7 "adventures" (and counting, I hope) would start to garner questions, if not a 48 hour psych eval, but it got to be repetitive enough to notice in the last couple of books. Luckily, not so repetitive that it annoyed me. Everything was excellently plotted though and I thoroughly enjoyed the book from start to finish. I saw the very end coming, but that's ok - it wasn't anything plot related and it was a great way to leave the reader smiling at the end.

I count the months until the next book is out. ( )

Ollie and Gav have finally decided to get marry but in the meantime Ollie is also in the midst of planning a major State Dinner for representatives from a nation that the US has been at odds with for 50 years. Trouble seems to gravitate toward Ollie and throughout she is trying to avoid international or political problems. But Ollie being Ollie, she finds the problems that are reverberating and saves the day! ( )