loribonesscaswell

Threadville is a wonderful village in Pennsylvania. A town restored by a bunch of crafty shoppes. Willow Vanderling has come to Threadville to open her dream store In Stitches, a delightful embroidery store catering to both hand and machine embroidery. Bus tours bring customers right to her door every day. The property is perfect, a store at street level, an apartment below and a cute little cottage at the rear of the property.

Willow would love to renovate the little Blueberry Cottage, "a Victorian confection with curlicues and gingerbread trim". But the village's zoning commissioner, Mike Krawbach, denies her permit to redo and upgrade the little cottage. Then he shows up in her store, which is full of customers, to try to get them to sign a petition to tear down the cottage to make room for a ATV trail. These are tourists from out of town and he is tricking them into signing this petition. Willow is livid and has a war of words with the corrupt commissioner with a wide variety of witnesses.

So when the commish ends up dead in Willow's backyard she is the one every one thinks killed the man. Of course she didn't, but she is new in town, people don't know her well, so it is up to her with a little help from her craft shoppe friends to untangle the clues and get a hoop around the person who really killed Mike Krawbach. They have to do it fast because Willow knows she not going to be able to embroider anything from jail.

I LOVED IT!!!!!

It is so rare that I LOVE a first book in a series because it takes time to develop everyone's stories, how they fit together, how they relate to the setting and the direction the series is heading. As I said above it boggles my mind to think this is Janet Bolin's first published novel or even the first book in this series.

The characters are well defined but have plenty of room for growth. The setting is picture perfect and thanks to cover illustrator Robin Moline it is so easy to see it and relate to it and want to travel there as soon as possible. There is suspense, humor, a quirky character or two, a few diversions, some lovable pets, and maybe a romance on the horizon. Bolin has crafted a charming debut to a series I know will keep us In Stitches!!


Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from Berkley Prime Crime, a division of Penguin Publishing. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 : “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”