One Sharp Stitch by Allie Pleiter

 One Sharp Stitch, by Allie Pleiter, is the first in the Nimble Needle series. I love a good cozy mystery - for several reasons: they are generally clean reads, they are not gruesome, they are light reading and I can usually get through them in one day. This one hit all the marks. Kept me guessing until the very end. I have been a fan of Allie's books since Bad Heiress Day (2005). While this does not have the humor that her chick lit had, it was a very enjoyable book. I learned a lot about needlecraft (something I knew nothing of before) and found myself wondering if this might be a hobby I would be interested in. 

The characters were true to life, and the relationship between the sisters was relatable. I loved the growth that those two shared throughout the book. 

I liked that this focused on the mystery and not on romance, too often I read romantic suspense and I'd rather it just be suspense. This book was just what I wanted on this day - sat down between loads of laundry and cleaning bathrooms. A very good escape. 

About the book:

After her graphic arts career - and her blooming office romance - got tossed like rejected design mockups, Shelby Phillips reluctantly returns to her painfully harmless town of Gwen Lake. Her stint is a simple and fool-proof as a tent stitch: manage the family needlepoint shop for a month during her parents' RV vacation. It's not as if they're retiring, right?

She's determined to pull off hosting her first trunk show with local vendors, even if that means dealing with her former classmate Kat Katsaros, a rising entrepreneur specializing in needlework scissors. Kat is angling to take over the Nimble Needle herself, and the tension unspools when she makes a terrible discovery on the morning of the event: Kat's dead body.

Shelby believes it was no accident and wants to expose whoever committed the murder with Kat's own equipment. She finds help in a new friend, a potential crush, and the surprising support of her sister and the Nimble Needle stitchers. Still, Shelby must move quickly to stitch together the clues before her maybe not-so-temporary new life comes apart at the seams!