Thursday, June 24, 2021

Assault and Batting (Taylor Quinn Quilt Shop Mystery #1), by Tess Rothery (author), Shaina Summerville (narrator)

Audible Audio, January 2021

Taylor Quinn has been building a life for herself in Portland, Oregon--a good job she likes, a home, a boyfriend--and then her mother dies.

She's back in the small town of Comfort, suddenly responsible for her sixteen-year-old sister, Belle, their grandfather, and her mother's quilt shop, Flour Sax. Oh, and her boyfriend broke it off and found a new girlfriend almost immediately, when she said she was moving back to Comfort.

The official verdict is that her mother, Laura Quinn, tripped and fell, possibly due to one drink too many, on the dock near the B&B she and some old friends were staying in. Belle has a different theory. She thinks she accidentally triggered one of her mother's friends to push Laura into the water. She has a reason for this that is almost as much a shock to Taylor than just the theory that their mother was murdered.

What follows includes Belle being a typically difficult teenager with something more than the standard teenage reason, Taylor discovering just how much she had cut herself off from her family and thus lost all awareness of their challenges, Belle and Taylor attempting their own amateur murder investigation, the realization that Grandpa Ernie (Laura's father) has been having memory problems, and the discovery that Grandma Quinn doesn't regard Belle, whom Laura adopted after her son, Taylor's father, died, as her "real" granddaughter.

And that's barely scraping the surface.

Taylor has to learn how run, not just any fabric store, something she has professional experience doing, but Flour Sax Quilt Shop, a small but specialized shop that she really knows only as her mother's daughter, helping out after school. Both her mother's YouTube video program and the small town gossip speculating that Laura may have had a serious drinking problem are major surprises to her.

The characters here are complex and interesting, and some that don't seem likeable prove to have surprisingly solid characters when they're put to the test. It's not a perfect book, but it is interesting and enjoyable.

Recommended.

I bought this audiobook.

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