Sometimes I wonder if this is my new addiction, cozy mysteries. The board elected to cancel coop today because the storm of the century was coming…yeah, the weather service had been selling that for days and I still haven’t seen anything above a standard winter storm for us but I was out voted. So I spent the morning running errands with my kiddo and we came home sopping wet despite rain coats. All I wanted to do was put on warm pajamas and curl up on the couch with a good book. So I put on warm pajamas, answered 57 emails, home schooled the kiddo and then curled up with Murder, Handcrafted by Isabella Alan.
This appears to be the fifth book in the Amish Quilt Shop series. LOL. Who thinks of these things? I picked it up because I hoped it would have some Amish flair and I do like to learn about other people’s way of life. It had a sprinkling of of the language, strictly the simple words, yes, no, god. shrug. I wanted more.
The mystery was decent. The reader gets the clues as the detective does. I like that. I like all the information up front so if I can’t figure it out it’s not because the author cheated. smiles. I figured this one out. But it wasn’t one of my fave kinds of murder. Someone decent or at least redeeming himself gets killed. sigh. And by a perfectly nice person. I don’t warm to those kinds of tales. I like the bad guy to get it in the neck.
Found the style repetitive. How many times in one page does the reader need to be reminded your dog is a black and white French Bulldog named Oliver? I got it, I swear. And she repeats some of her backfill, mainly in the first few chapters. By 60 pages in or so it was fairly smooth sailing.
âââ — Three pages. I liked it. It was nice on an icky day. I won’t be reading any of the other ones or her new series coming out in December. It’s just not my flavor.
T.A. Henry 