Falling To Pieces by Vannetta Chapman ~ review

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
• Paperback: 366 pages
• Publisher: Zondervan (September 27, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0310330432
• ISBN-13: 978-0310330431

About the book:

In this first book of a three-book series, author Vannetta Chapman brings a fresh twist to the popular Amish fiction genre. She blends the familiar components consumers love in Amish books—faith, community, simplicity, family—with an innovative who-done-it plot that keeps readers guessing right up to the last stitch in the quilt.

When two women—one Amish, one English—each with different motives, join forces to organize a successful on-line quilt auction, neither expects nor wants a friendship. As different as night and day, Deborah and Callie are uneasy partners who simply want to make the best of a temporary situation. But a murder, a surprising prime suspect, a stubborn detective, and the town's reaction throw the two women together, and they form an unlikely alliance to solve a mystery and catch a killer.

Set in the well-known Amish community of Shipshewana, Falling to Pieces will attract both devoted fans of the rapidly-growing Amish fiction genre, as well as those who are captivated by the Amish way of life.

My take on this book:

A cozy mystery that involves Amish characters and a quilt shop, I just knew I was going to enjoy this book and boy was I right.

Callie Harper finds herself in Shipshewana after inheriting Daisy's Quilt Shop from her recently deceased aunt. She thinks she will just go for a few weeks and clear out her aunts things and sell the shop, but things don't go according to plan. When Deborah Yoder shows up at the shop with an armload of quilts, Callie learns that her aunt had an agreement with Deborah and two other Amish ladies to sell their quilts. Deborah soon convinces Callie that she should reopen the shop and take the quilts on consignment. When Callie decides to try her hand at auctioning the quilts on Ebay the Amish quilt makers quickly agree, but when Mr. Stakehorn the editor of the local paper writes a story suggesting that Callie might be taking advantage of the Amish quilting group Callie becomes furious and wants a retraction. When several people see Callie arguing with Mr. Stakehorn hours before he is found dead, Callie becomes a prime suspect. Deborah is certain her new friend could never commit murder, and when several other things start to happen in town the two put their heads together to try and figure out who the murderer might be.

This was a fast paced who-dun-it that really gave us several suspects. I liked how the story unfolded allowing the reader to see the friendship between Deborah and Callie grow. Callie was a character that was totally easy to relate to, I thought that it was interesting that snippets of her life was revealed in her aunts old journal. Callie was grieving not only for her aunt but for the loss of another loved one from a few years back. I thought the author allowed her to grow through out the story, it felt like she had finally found a place to call home. Deborah was different than most of the Amish characters that I read about, her husband seemed to allow her more freedom. She really looked out for her friends, and she and Callie really made a great investigative team. I always get excited when the author writes a dog into the story and in this one we had Max, a golden that Callie had inherited from her aunt Daisy. He was a comfort to Callie and turned out to be a hero.

This was one of those stories that when I started it I just couldn't put it down. The author's words really brought the scenes to life and there were several scenes that while tense also had humor woven in. There were plenty of twists and turns that made this a page turner for me, while I was a bit disappointed with the ending, overall I found it a great read and look forward to reading the next book in this series! 

A complimentary copy of this book was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.