A Crafter Knits a Clue

A Crafter Knits a Clue is the first in Holly Quinn's A Handcrafted Mystery series. It's set in the small town of Heartsford, Wisconsin, and the main character, Samantha “Sammy” Kane, is the owner of Community Craft, which sells items handmade by members of the community. Sammy took over the store upon the death of her friend Kate, who'd started the business. When the book opens, Sammy is busy getting ready for the town's upcoming Spring Fling. Early in the story, Sammy finds the owner of the Yarn Barn dead in her store, killed with a knitting needle.

We meet Sammy's potential love interest in Detective Liam Nash, new to town and not very familiar with small-town life and making Sammy's blood boil for one reason or another every time she turns around. Sammy and her sister and cousin reactivate their childhood investigative crew, named S.H.E. for their initials, to try to solve the crime. Sammy's curiosity gets her into some tight situations, and sometimes I wanted to smack her for not having a lick of sense in how she proceeds because of that curiosity.

I enjoyed the book well enough. There were some grammatical and spelling errors that distracted from my reading, and as others have said, it didn't feel like the first in a series. It seemed to lack some set-up, and it seemed to assume the reader knew more about something than the reader actually knew. But I liked it. I loved the descriptions of small-town life and found them to be pretty accurate to what I knew and grew up with. I'll probably read more in the series.

Thanks to #netgalley for the review copy of #ACrafterKnitsAClue. All opinions expressed here are my own, and I don't say nice things about books I don't like.