Summary:
Kelly Flynn's aunt Helen was just murdered in her home in Colorado. They have the man in custody, a vagrant with a history of violence. But Kelly's not convinced. She finds out from Helen's attorney that she took out a mortgage on her home to get $20,000 for some mysterious reason, and the investigating officer tells her that Helen was found with a broken knitting needle on the ground nearby, and her knitting was nowhere to be found. Helen lived in a cottage next to what used to be her family home with her long-deceased husband, which has been refurbished into a cafe in one half of the house, and a yarn shop in the other half. Now Kelly has to figure out how best to handle Helen's home, so she can get back to her life in DC. But she can't even consider leaving until she finds out why Helen needed all that money, and who really killed her, and all Helen's friends from the yarn shop have vowed to help.
Thoughts:
I wanted so much to like this. I really did. But it just didn't do it. When reading a mystery novel, one expects most of the plot to be devoted to following the main character in her hunt to solve the mystery. Sure, you see Kelly finding out lots about her aunt that she never knew. But so much time is spent talking about Kelly's fear of knitting (because she'll get bored/it won't come out nice/but she doesn't know how) and the amateur sleuthing takes a backseat to how luscious the yarns feel and how soft and colorful and if I had to read one more word about the kaleidoscope of colors in the yarn store, I think I would've screamed. There was obviously something that would have happened with the only guy in the book that's Kelly's age, but he's almost nonexistent for most of the book, except when he shows up to flirt with her a little. The book really deals more with Kelly's insecurities and her decisions of what to do about Helen's house and her making friends with Helen's old friends from the knitting shop than with the murder itself. And when the murder is finally solved, the book ends right there. Barely any epilogue of "I'm staying in Colorado." Just "let's go sit on the porch so I can digest this."
As I said, I wanted to like this book. I wanted to love it, really. But I just couldn't get past the droning nature of the book. It went on and on about nothing at all, and didn't get interesting (and start really solving the murder) until the last 75 pages or so. I can understand some of the character development with the knit shop ladies, but the book really delves farther into them than it does into the murder, and when it's a murder mystery, that's really not okay.
Book 18 of 50
Pages: 273
Genre: Mystery
Grade: D+
Would I Recommend?: Not really, sadly...
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