Title: Yarn to Go (affiliate link)
Series: A Yarn Retreat Mystery, Book 1
Author: Betty Hechtman
Narrator: Margaret Strom

Rating: 3/5 stars ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Craft and genre: Knitting cozy mystery

Publisher’s description/jacket copy:

Dessert chef Casey Feldstein doesn’t know a knitting needle from a crochet hook. But after her aunt dies unexpectedly, leaving Casey to run her yarn retreat business, the sweets baker finds herself rising to the occasion—and trying to unravel a murder mystery…

When Casey finds out that her late aunt’s business, Yarn2Go, has one more yarn retreat scheduled, she decides to go ahead and host the event, despite her complete lack of experience as a knitter. At least the retreat is on the beautiful Monterey Peninsula.

But the idyllic setting is soured when a retreat regular is found murdered in her hotel room. Feeling a sense of responsibility, Casey begins to weave the clues together and detects a pattern which may shed light on her aunt’s suspicious death. Despite the danger, the last thing Casey plans to do is retreat. She’ll catch this killer…or dye trying.

Includes a knitting pattern and a recipe!

[Book cover image and publisher’s description via Penguin Random House]

My thoughts on the story:

This is the first book in a cozy mystery series, and first books always have some pretty heavy lifting to do: In the end, I need to feel a connection with/give a damn about the main character(s), fall in love with the location/setting, and, especially in small town cozies, process a whole lot of backstory and history. Then, on top of that, the mystery needs to be sufficiently…mysterious. That’s an awful lot of work for one relatively short book!

Alas, in the end, while I wasn’t bored while I listened, I definitely didn’t feel immediately sucked into Casey’s Monterey Peninsula-based world. I rolled my eyes a bit at her inability to behave like a grownup, and then rolled them again at her near-childish misunderstandings with the cop down the street, who is destined, presumably, to eventually become Officer Boyfriend later in the series. (Seriously, Casey, no reasonable person would assume that the combination of cars parked outside plus music coming from a garage could only mean one thing: nightly orgies!) I also didn’t feel a particular connection to most of the cast of characters attending Casey’s knitting retreat—I wanted to want to root for them, but they just all seemed to need a bit more filling out. I did, however, absolutely love Frank, a private detective from Chicago, and Casey’s former boss. He was funny, engaging, and seemed interested in Casey and her future, which, in turn, made me a bit more interested in her too. (Frank is my favorite. More Frank in future books, please!)

When it came to the mystery itself, I must say that I was pleasantly surprised! Though I’d already figured out the murderer’s identity pretty early on, the actual, ahem, unraveling of the whodunnit relied heavily upon the kind of attention to detail that yarn crafters will definitely appreciate. I just wish that focus had also extended to a few other areas of the plot—say, in regards to estate settlements and/or how one might go about selling a house, or the fact that dudes knitting in public is not generally a thing that’s a big deal these days (or historically, for that matter, *cough* traditional knitting guilds *cough* World War I *cough*).

My thoughts on the narrator:

Just fine. There were a few pieces-of-unattributed-dialog-said-in-wrong-voice mishaps, but no complaints otherwise.

My thoughts overall:

This book didn’t blow me away, but it was a perfectly pleasant companion to the crochet project that I was working on while listening. I will probably give Casey and Yarn2Go another chance in the future by listening to the second book in the series.

Feline/canine sidekick bonus points awarded:

KITTY!

You can buy the book here: Yarn to Go Audible audiobook (affiliate link), or request it at your local library!

You can also add it on Goodreads here.