Scrapbook of Secrets

I've had Scrapbook of Secrets (Cumberland Creek) by Mollie Cox Bryan on my to-read list for a few months now.



When a young mother commits suicide and the members of the local scrapbooking group see that all of her albums and pictures have been dumped on the sidewalk next to the trash can, they rescue them with the intent of putting together albums for her children. None of them knew Maggie Rae well, and it turns out that all of their assumptions about her were completely false. She was living a secret life and, it turns out, she was murdered.

And then there's the mystery of who stabbed Vera's mother at the grocery store and how the older woman made it all the way home without knowing that there was a knife protruding from her neck.

The writing is really, really good. The characters are all three dimensional women with their own lives and back stories. It reminded me of all of the things that I loved so much about the earlier Elm Creek books.

But I hated the character of Annie. She's unhappy as a stay at home mom. The sticky juice her small children leave behind for her to clean up is about to push her over the edge, and apparently she's not smart enough to figure out that she could eliminate the problem by not letting her two young boys roam the house with cups of juice. Either stop buying it or limit it to meals when they're sitting at the table with adult supervision. Even my kids don't dribble juice all over everything. She also doesn't like her new home in Cumberland Creek and can't believe that "in this day and age" people do anything that she disagrees with. The straw that broke the camel's back for me was when the demanded of the other scrap bookers "Haven't all of you ever slept with other men besides your husbands?" Really?!