What if every jar of jam in a small town held a secret - and you were the only one being forced to taste them all?

Food critic Mira Fitch didn't come to Crabapple Creek to solve a murder. She came because her editor threatened her job, the pay was two hundred and fifty dollars, and she had nowhere else to be. Her assignment: judge forty-seven jars at a small-town preserves contest, hand out some ribbons, and go home. Simple. Professional. Completely beneath her.

But something in the wild berries from the town's ancient creek hollow does something that no berry has any business doing - and now Mira is sitting at a judging table in a community hall, tasting her way through secrets she was never supposed to know. A parking lot grudge. A thirty-nine-year-old lie. A phone call that should have stayed behind a closed door. And somewhere between the strawberry and the rhubarb, the unmistakable outline of a man who died too conveniently - right before he could take everything the town loved most.

She can't explain what she's experiencing. She can't tell anyone. And she can't stop tasting.

The contest ends in three hours. The killer is in this room - sitting in the front row, hands folded, wearing their best cardigan, smiling at Mira like they have absolutely nothing to hide.

There is one jar left on the table.

Mira knows what it will tell her. She knows what she'll have to do with that information. And she knows that whoever broke into her room last night and went through her notebook is watching her right now, waiting to see if she picks it up.

The question isn't whether the jam tells the truth.

The question is ? what happens to the woman who tastes it?