Book Review - Cut, Crop & Die

Cut, Crop & Die by Joanna Campbell Slan
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I had a bit of a hard time getting into this, the second Kiki Lowenstein cozy mystery from Joanna Campbell Slan, filled with bits and bobs about scrapbooking - one of my own favourite hobbies - as well as curious twists and turns surrounding the death of a scrapper at a crop that Time In a Bottle (or TinaB for those in the know), the shop where Kiki is employed, was sponsoring.

The dead woman is one of Kiki's rivals, a scrapbooker who has recently won a prestigious scrapping contest, and apparently has stepped all over everyone in Kiki's life to get here. From her best friend and former cleaning woman Mert, who had once been fired and blacklisted by the woman, to her boss Dodie, who had kicked her out of the store and banned her from shopping there, to some of her most loyal customers (including one who was having an affair with the dead woman's husband), everyone seems to have had a motive for murder. So whodunit? Is it Kiki's new co-employee with a possibly shady past? Was Yvonne's husband looking to start his life over? Could it be the owner of a rival scrapbooking store, looking to generate a buzz?

It took about 90 pages in before I was invested enough to take more time with this book than it took to get through a couple pages at a time. And I was reading this on my eReader, which usually means I zip through a book like nobody's business, because my Kobo goes with me *everywhere*. But this time I found it a little hard to concentrate.

Whatever it was about the first Kiki book that drew me in and got me hooked immediately wasn't quite there for me with this one. Maybe the charm had worn off a little, or maybe I picked this one up too quickly after finishing the last and my head just wasn't ready for it yet, I don't know. Or, maybe, just maybe, it wasn't quite as captivating as the first. I still liked it, and it was still a fun read, though I was sad that there weren't as many new and different scrapbooking techniques and tips at the ends of the chapters. If I really wanted to know about tea and such I'd read a different sort of book. Still, it's fun to read about characters that seem like they could be your friends from your own little scrapbooking store in your home town, so I'll probably read the next soon enough. After all, it's already Kobo-loaded :)

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