{Yarn Along} The Perfect Mother

More self-striping sock yarn, this time Knitpicks Simple Stripes in Vineyard. I think this will be my 16th pair for 2014. 

The Perfect Mother by Nina Darnton begins with a late night phone call that shatters Jennifer Lewis's perfect existence. Her daughter, a college student studying abroad, has been arrested for murder. As quickly as she can, Jennifer makes arrangements for her her two younger children and books a plane ticket, determined to help her daughter unravel what is obviously some kind of terrible mistake.

Except most of what Jennifer believed about Emma's life in Spain turns out to be false. And it starts to seem like what the reader knows about Jennifer and her daughter and their relationship might be a little too perfect to be true. Jennifer doesn't understand the foreign legal system that she's dealing with and is starting to fear that she doesn't understand her own daughter. I enjoyed the book until the very end, which didn't quite work for me.



Every year, there's a string of murders in the small town of Apple, Massachusetts. It's been happening for decades and the murderer has never been caught. Stumbling across grisly murder scenes is just as predictable as the changing seasons. Jackson Gill and his best friends find this year's first body and hope that they won't be next.  Bloody Bloody Apple by Howard Odentz is rich with atmosphere and suspense.


For more pretty knitting projects to drool over, check out On the Needles at Patchwork Times.



Disclosure -- the publishers provided me with ARCs