The Vampire Knitting Club: Cornwall

I have absolutely loved the Vampire Knitting Club series. They blend great characters, fun humour and increasingly brain stretching puzzles to make them top entertainment. When I saw that there was going to be a spin-off following Jennifer in Cornwall (my old stomping grounds) I was over the moon. Now I've read it, I have thoughts.

Pros:
• Excellent setting! I don't just mean that the Cornish landscape is great (it is), but the fictional village and surroundings are already the most interesting of all of Nancy Warren's witchy books - there are so many places and features that she has barely touched on and I can't wait to find out more.
• Excellent characters! There were quite a range of characters introduced in this little book, and so many of them struck me as being really fascinating, I want to spend more time with them and get to know them better.
• Actually about Cornwall OK this is a brighter, almost Studio Ghibli version of Cornwall, but Nancy Warren has clearly spent some time there and appreciated a real pasty (not the spawn of Cthulhu that goes by the name of Ginsters). I did catch a Cornish character talking about “going to the end of the block” a phrase I don't think any West Country soul would ever utter, but that's a minor detail.

Cons:
• Well...just the one “Con”, but it is significant. I felt that the ending was very rushed. I honestly felt that the author had spent the book carefully and gently weaving a beautiful landscape and threading in an intriguing mystery, and then realised that she had to hand it in tomorrow. (minor spoiler: Suddenly from one sentence to the next Jennifer figures the whole thing out, soon after that the story jumps ahead in time to the big show down/reveal and then the story is over in little over a chapter. ). Now, Nancy Warren is a really good writer and even though it was rushed it still gave me that warm glow that I get with her books, I still enjoyed it. I was just really surprised that it was suddenly over, I felt a bit like those cartoon characters that run over a cliff and hover there for a moment before they realise that they've run out of ground.

Overall:
An absolutely great start to a new series (I hope), with a rushed ending, but I can't wait to read more!

Nice spinoff, curious to see where it goes and diverges.