Sins and Needles: A Needlecraft Mystery

Actually I started reading books from this author. I was very glad to find that her books were on audio. Her books are light and fun and she keeps you guessing until the end!! I would recommend.

There are so many things wrong with this story that I don't know where to begin. The first thing that irritated me was the narrator's voice. Connie Crawford has a difficult time with male and female inflection. The different voices she used were awful. Also, Crawford can't do a decent Texas accent. Being from Houston Texas, I found her attempt very irritating. Towards the end of the book it seemed as if Crawford was tired because she rushed through the reading as if she were in a race. I looked ahead and noticed that Crawford is also reading the next book. In the future I will avoid her as a narrator.
Normally I can get over a bad narrator if the story is good. No such luck. For some odd reason, the author forgot the main ingredient that makes this a successful series. Betsy, Jill, and Godwin barely had speaking parts. Instead,this story revolved around a family drama and a character that would normally be on the periphery of the story. The characters were flat and uninteresting. The plot although believable was lacking in substance. It was filled with long and unnecessary descriptions of the items found in the murder victim's home. I felt like Ferris was writing to fill pages. Also, the villain was obvious. In fact, the villain was pointed out at the beginning of the story and the reasons were spelled out over and over throughout the book.
This was not one of the best book in the series. It was the worst. I wish I hadn't wasted a credit on it.

A WONDERFUL BOOK, WITH GREAT WAYS TO KILL A PERSON. ONE OF MONICA FERRIS'S BEST. IF YOU HAD TO START WITH ONE OF HER SERIES, THIS SHOULD BE THE ONE. EXTREMLY WELL DONE.

I'm not a knitter, had to look up "counted cross stitch" to figure out what they were talking about, but the Minnesota locale drew me in to the first book -- and now I can't stop reading and/or listening.

I have no doubt it has a niche appeal -- especially the narrator. If Connie Crawford were reading any other series, I'd never get through it. But for a book focusing on the Ladies Who Knit, in Minnesota, she's perfect -- talk about type casting. That accent! Loved it -- loved it for this book, you understand. That is precisely how I would expect such a woman to sound.

Sins and Needles has much more going on than previous books -- a much more multi faceted plot line. Here we have Great Aunt Edyth, a confirmed man-hater, passing away at age 97, and leaving tens of millions of dollars plus a house filled with antiques. The various characters -- her descendants, male, female and assorted hangers-on -- all vie to get a piece of the action, but her Aunt Edyth's will makes it tough. She specifies it will only go to her FEMALE descendants -- which means that the male members, and other greedy souls (no spoiler here) have to work overtime to get their hands on some of the loot. To be honest, it's a textbook on greed and avarice -- watching all of them scheme and plot was enough to make me think that if Great Aunt Ethyl had been smart, she would have disinherited the whole crowing, clawing, vicious lot of them and left it all to an animal shelter. Sheesh! They're disgusting -- which gets pretty funny, actually. It's sort of like watching the Superbowl:. There's one ball, and everyone is willing to risk life and limb to get it.

So? Among other things, in addition to a murder via knitting needle, we end up reading about a hidden map, an actual treasure hunt -- complete with leeches! -- children born "under the blanket", lots of trivia about antiques (which I enjoyed enormously) and leeches. Did I mention the leeches? This book has got 'The African Queen' beat all to heck.

If you want a quirky listen, I highly recommend this book, and indeed this series. Lake Minnetonka never seemed so appealing.

I missed the regulars in this story -- more Betsy, Jill, Lars, etc
also, this was the first narrated by Connie Crawford but I really didn't like her. Susan Boyce did a much better job.

I enjoy this series of mysteries and would recommend this title because the story is one of the better ones.

I was engaged in the story from the beginning and really didn't know Who Did It until quite near the end!

Unfortunately, the reader for this particular book had a voice that was VERY hard to listen to -- quite deep with very little contrast in voices with the exception of two characters who shared a deep southern drawl. In fact, one of the deepest character voices was that of the female protagonist which made it very hard to distinguish characters when she was in a dialog with a male character. This is the only book I have listened to by this reader and I will have to think about whether I would download another one.

Monica Ferris is a delightful writier with an eye to the community in Minnesota where her stories are set and that keeps me returning!