A delightful book full of baking, spying, and trains!

I came across this book thanks to Twitter and I just knew I had to get it! MG + mystery + trains + baking? Sign me up! Those are all things I just love!

😍 The baking! I just loved how awesome Alice was with baking, I would have so loved some illustrations to see her creations, though thanks to the great descriptions I could definitely imagine them and visualize them in my head!
😍 The spying! I just love how Alice found time in between all her baking and other things to do spying. And she was pretty awesome in it. Yes, she has many things to learn, but she is getting there and I just loved how smart she was and how quickly she solved ciphers and other things.
😍 I wasn’t at first sure what time-period this plays in, but apparently close to WWII given what we learn later on. I am definitely curious if we will see WWII develop more as the story continues or if it will always be on the fringes of that horrific event.
😍 Penelope! She was such a fun and sweet girl and really? I need a series with her as the MC. She was a delightful character and I love it that she loves sleuthing and solving mysteries.
😍 The train. I just love reading about trains, especially when a big mystery happens on it. That is just so much fun! And this one? I would just love being part of the first class and eat all those yummy foods, see the world pass by through the window, and more.
😍 The whodunnit. We get to see one at first, but is that really the big bad person? Or not? I won’t spoil it, but I was definitely very surprised!
😍 The cover! I just love love the cover, though I would have loved to see the cat some more as it seems the cat is not along with the mission.
😍 The mystery was great fun! And we even get another mystery in the mix which made me smile!
😍 That the chapters were separated by a special illustration page! It was the same page over and over, but I still liked it a lot.
😍 PARIS!!! France!! Still want to visit one day~

😶 I just would have liked a bit more natural feel between Alice in the kitchen and her spying. Now at times I wondered how no one was keeping an eye on Alice given how often she was able to sneak away and sometimes even disappear for hours at a time. I am sorry, but I just cannot imagine that is possible given how everything was in that time and how often we already saw hints to how strict everyone was.
😶 While I loved the ending, I would just have liked to see a bit more after that scene and before the epilogue. Now it felt like we were almost done and then BOOM epilogue. Done.

But all in all, I loved this book and I had tons of fun. I read it in one go, that is how much fun I had. I would recommend it and I will be getting book 2 soon (by the time this review comes up I will probably already have read it though, haha).