Twisted Threads (A Mainely Needlepoint Mystery, #1)

by Wait Lea

Returning to the quaint coastal town of Harbor Haven, Maine--a place she once called home--Angie Curtis finds her memories aren't all quite pleasant ones. . .

After leaving a decade ago, Angie has been called back to Harbor Haven by her grandmother, Charlotte, who raised her following her mother's disappearance when she was a child. Her mother has been found, and now the question of her whereabouts has sadly become the mystery of her murder.

The bright spot in Angie's homecoming is reuniting with Charlotte, who has started her own needlepointing business with a group called Mainely Needlepointers. But when a shady business associate of the stitchers dies suddenly under suspicious circumstances, Charlotte and Angie become suspects. As Angie starts to weave together clues, she discovers that this new murder may have ties to her own mother's cold case. . .

• ISBN10: 1617730041
• ISBN13: 9781617730047
• Publish Date: 6 January 2015 (first published 1 January 2015)
• Publish Status: Active
• Out of Print: 19 April 2022
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Kensington Publishing
• Format: Paperback (US Mass Market)
• Pages: 320
• Language: English
• URL: https://penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/isbn/9781617730047

Reviews

[Angie]

I received an ARC through NetGalley.

Twisted Threads was quite the interesting mystery. Angie Curtis has been living in Arizona for the past ten years when she finally gets the call she had been waiting for. Her grandmother has just let her know that her mother's body has been found after nineteen years. Angie packs up and heads to Maine for the funeral, but winds up staying since her mother's murder case has been reopened, and then another murder occurs right there in her grandmother's house!

I was immediately drawn into Twisted Threads's mystery! There are two mysteries happening, and the first one was under disturbing circumstances. Angie's mother disappeared nearly two decades ago and no one had a clue where she went until her body was found stuffed in a deep freezer in a storage unit. The owner of the unit was dead, as was his wife, so it was their daughter, Lauren, who discovered the body after going through her father's things. That is seriously screwed up! Of course, the whole town thinks her father is the murderer, but in 300 pages Angie discovers that that isn't the case at all. There are a lot of twists along the way.

As for the second murder, it wasn't quite as engaging. It was quite strange that the man who screwed over Angie's grandmother and her needlepoint business was killed in the middle of their living room without anyone noticing. But other than that, I didn't find myself fully engaged in it. It's obvious that one of the needlepointers did it, but I didn't figure out who, even though I did guess at who killed Angie's mother.

I probably would have rated Twisted Threads higher, but I did have one major issue with it. The dialogue felt very stiff and there was a lot of it! I expected Angie's grandmother to speak more properly, but so does everyone else. I didn't really believe most of what they were saying. Also, there is just a ton of dialogue. You know how sometimes when asked a question, someone will rephrase it as a statement and then answer? There's quite a bit of that, as well as characters repeating statements that they agree with rather than just a quick "I agree" or "Me too." It was annoying.

In the end, I did really like Twisted Threads. The mystery of Angie's mother was really intriguing and disturbing, and I liked how it wound up being connected to the second, more recent murder. I also liked the needlepoint theme, since I grew up with a mom who was always doing it. It brought back memories of when she tried to teach me, but I didn't have the patience. It also made me really crave some clam chowder. Yummy.

Read more of my reviews at Pinkindle Reads & Reviews.