Flashback Friday – #Review – The Quilt Ripper by Mary Devlin Lynch and Debbie Devlin Zook

Dollycas’s Thoughts

I snapped up this book when is was free on Amazon because I knew I would need a “Q” book for my Alphabet Soup Challenge.

The story starts with a letter being written in 1759 as a wife, Hannah, who is sending a trunk of her belongings ahead to her husband in the new world across the ocean. Then moves to present time with Miranda Hathaway’s story and the members of her quilt guild. A mystery arises when one of a member’s house is broken into and the only thing she can find wrong is an heirloom skirt has been ripped apart. Miranda notices that it has been carefully ripped, using a seam ripper and determines the damage was done by someone who knows how to sew. One member of the guild, the only male member, is hiding something, is he involved in this ripping situation?

I don’t know if I just wasn’t in the right frame of mind or if the constant changes in the points of view just confused me but this story and I were just not a good fit. Before I hit schedule on this post I checked out some other reviews and there are several good ones so I am going to assume it was me.

I liked the idea of something from the past making it so far into the future without being discovered but also thought this item had been passed down from generation to generation and probably should have been in a museum. It was so well kept and in fantastic shape that no one ever had an appraisal or an expert look at it. No, just stored in a box on the top shelf of a closet.

The characters were engaging but some were not that realistic. I did enjoy meeting “Queenie”, the quilt shop owner and president of the Cutler Quilt Guild Number One. Her shop sounds delightful and I do love that the guild devotes 1 meeting per month making things for charity. Gabe to me seemed all over the place, a private investigator with a couple of cases.  I would have loved more about Hannah’s story, I was drawn in my her letter immediately.

The mystery itself just didn’t hold my interest. I found myself putting the book down several times, only picking it up again because I knew I had to finish it for this review.  The reader knows who the “ripper” is pretty early in the story. I like mysteries that keep us guessing right up until the end. The ending itself did nothing for me.

I am wavering between 2 and 3 stars for this book. According to My Rating Chart with 2 being “A Dreadful Detour” and 3 being “A Satisfactory Excursion”. I will have to go with the 3 stars because I did finish the book and it wasn’t dreadful. It just wasn’t my Blue Hawaii (cup of tea).