Whew! There are a lot of ingredients in this latest Goldy Shulz stew. Had my head spinning awhile,but then, considering the caffeine addiction of our heroine... Tell me why I read books with settings similar to things I'm going through or thinking about at the time. CRUNCH TIME is about a group of teenagers who randomly meet and eventually decide to do a study group before taking their SATs. As time passes, they start to study less and build more relationships with each other. They start questioning the tests like why it has become competitive amongst students, whether it is actually helpful, and things like that.

This time, Yolanda and her great aunt are displaced when the man that they are living with is found murdered. So Goldy and Tom insist that they come to stay with them temporarily. With a whole list of supsects, Goldy caters a dinner that goes terribly wrong and gets a ton more clues -- we all know the path Ms Davidson goes down, but the ride is always a blast!He'll change," I thought flippantly, "He'll grow up and develop into a good person by the end of this novel." I cannot tell you how much I disliked Yolanda or her ridiculous aunt. Yolanda behaves horribly and Goldy makes excuses for her and her aunt at every turn. We would not appreciate children behaving in the petty and silly manner that these two behave. Eat good, do good, stay odd. Get creative in the kitchen and join the fight against food waste with Oddbox.

I don't read these books for realism. There is plenty of non-fiction for that. Yes, Goldy always gets herself into trouble. Yes, every book ends the same way with Goldy narrowly escaping death. Its fiction. That is what makes it fun. At no point did I find the plot hard to follow, and I found all of the side stories interesting as well. Okay, so I probably would change the whole "smuggling hemp seeds in the dogs" to something more believably lucrative (smuggling cocaine in the dogs, etc), but if that is my only complaint, I'm still going to give the book 5 stars. If you enjoy these types of books, you have to expect that certain scenarios will always hold true. These are:

Law enforcement looking the other way as nosy main character breaks laws and illegally obtains information and evidence 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 have never had to write the SATs, so I can't really comment on the authenticity of the portrayal of the SATs, but I will say that it is on par with what I know from the movies and other tv shows.

If you have a good grade average all through high school, you take a SATs quiz in the last semester of high school to determine what colleges will most likely accept you as a student. The tests are taken very seriously and no one would ever imagine cheating on the quiz except for in a joke. All except one person who wants to impress their mom, to show her mom that she can be better than what she thinks. This girl is Jane, a girl trying to lead a normal life even though her mom is an international actress. So what's wrong with this one? Where should I start? There is just way too much going on here. Too many characters, too many subplots, too many attempts to throw the reader off course. I suppose with a cozy mystery, the reader expects to suspend their disbelief somewhat and just go with it. But Goldy just ignores any and all precautions as she goes about gathering clues to solve the murders. That happens in most of the books due to her personality but here she really defies logic in gathering evidence. There is no way a prosecuting attorney could ever bring the bad guy to justice because virtually 100% of the evidence would be inadmissible. Goldy commits all sorts of crimes to gather that evidence as well, including multiple B&Es, false statements to the police (even her own husband) and yet she gets offended when the police don't share facts with her. What was once an endearing quality of Goldy's personality (which is what really drives these books) has now become simply annoying and making me, as a reader, have less and less sympathy for her.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.