Reading Roundup!

A couple weeks ago, at one of the thrift stores I frequent, I stood looking at the books selection.  And wondering if someone had dumped their entire collection of cozy mysteries at the store's donation center.  Because there were well over a hundred!

("Cozy mysteries" being murder mysteries wherein the protagonist is heavily into a craft of some sort.  Sewing, knitting, embroidery... there were even scrapbooking mysteries!)

Out of a sense of amused curiosity, I looked for quilting titles, and found two.  And a dressmaking title that also had promise.  Hey, for $.50 I wanted to try them and see!  So, my results:

Quilt or Innocence, by Elizabeth Craig.  I tried to like this one, but honestly, the characters all felt like cardboard cutouts - wooden and interchangeable (I had trouble keeping them straight).  And for a supposed group of longtime friends, they were all really quick to accuse one another of murder in a heartbeat.  Maybe the stiffness to this book was because it was the first one in its series, but regardless, I'm not going looking for any more of the volumes.  Going to drop this one at the quilt guild's freebies table, let someone else have it.

A Drunkard's Path, by Clare O'Donohue. This one is book two in a series, which may be an advantage as the writer knows their characters and situation better.  This one felt more "realistic," for whatever value that holds, than the other two.  I did peg the killer before the book ended, but there were enough details that I hadn't guessed to make it satisfying.  However, if the main character and her boyfriend were supposed to have chemistry, I couldn't see it.  I felt like I was being told that they were making out, without any emotions or behavior being shown to warrant it.  I'll probably pass this one on to my mother, see if she likes it.

Deadly Patterns, by Melissa Bourbon. This one is book three of its series, and themed on dressmaking rather than quilting.  But!  This one also contains urban fantasy, magical realism... whatever you want to call it.  The protagonist has a Gift, as do the other women in her family.  Her house, in fact, is haunted by the benign spirit of her great-grandmother.  So this appealed heavily to my reading interests.  The mystery was interesting (again, I pegged the killer, but not all the details).  My only complaints would be the need for a family tree at the beginning of the book (it's at the end), and that the rightful ownership of the coin discovered at the end was never detailed.  Still, my favorite of the three, and one I'm definitely keeping.  And I'm going to keep my eye out for others in the series!