I want to know what happens!

I stumbled across Ink, Red, Deadwhen I was browsing for free Kindle books. It wasn't free, but the description (a scrapbooking sleuth visits the home of a cat hoarder and finds a corpse in the freezer) intrigued me enough that I ordered the short story and checked the library that afternoon for the first book in the series.

I wound up starting with the second book, Cut, Crop & Die. I don't know exactly what happened in the first book, but there was just enough backstory included for me to plunge in to Kiki Lowenstein's world where, in the first chapter, a woman dies at a crop party after she eats an orange scone poisoned with baby aspirin and the Epi-Pen in her purse turns out to be empty. (Maybe it's because aspirin was off limits to me for most of last year and we've been talking about getting an Epi-Pen now that we've got the bee hives, but that creeped me out.)

In addition to the intriguing murder mystery and fun side plots, there are scrapbooking tips between the chapters. When one of Kiki's classes make scrapbooks out of paper bags, the instructions are included a few pages later. And there's a minor romantic element that has me hooked.

As soon as I finished the book, I wanted to know what happened next. That's where the Kindle comes in. The Kiki Lowenstein mysteries are available in Kindle editions. Which only cost a dollar something less than the paperback, so in most cases I'd buy the physical book.

Did I mention that I really wanted to know what happened next? I didn't want to wait and see if whoever had it checked out from the library returned it on time, or wait for a copy of the paperback to be shipped to me.

Over the years, I've bought hundreds of books that I just had to read and, two decades later, the ones I didn't give away when we moved are still sitting here. At least half of the books I check out from the library for myself get returned unread. Some, I've checked out three or four times and still not even started. (I've also read hundreds more, but those aren't the ones I'm talking about here.)

That's another thing I love about the Kindle. I can add something I think I want to read to my wish list (so I don't forget what it was) and wait to spend the money until I'm actually ready to start reading it.

I'm halfway through my new purchase and loving every page. And hoping the fourth book will be available when we hit the library later this week.
Forget rating books with stars, I liked these books so much I spent the gift certificates I was saving for new dies or Bonnie Hunter's upcoming book -- that's saying something!