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Tuesday, September 12, 2023

Book Review: Fahrenheit 501 by Diane Vallere (Samantha Kidd #12)

Stars: 4 out of 5
Pros: Fun plot, strong characters, great laughs
Cons: One aspect of the plot is needlessly confusing early on
The Bottom Line:
Samantha and jeans
A fashion society
A fun mystery



Are Jeans a Motive for Murder?

Despite the fact that I’ve never been into fashion (I’m a guy, what can I say?), I’ve enjoyed the Samantha Kidd Mysteries.  The heroine of Diane Vallere’s series has made a career out of fashion.  Since I at least know a little about jeans, I was looking forward to seeing how they fit into Samantha’s world in Fahrenheit 501.  The result, as always, was fun.

Samantha Kidd is both thrilled, anxious, and surprised when she is invited to join a secret fashion society in her town of Ribbon, Pennsylvania.  She wants to make a good impression, but that is a little hard to do when she knows absolutely nothing about them.  She hadn’t even heard of them before.

Samantha’s interview ends when she finds an elderly member of the group lying dead under a pile of jeans.  Unfortunately, the police think it was murder.  Despite not being a full member yet, Samantha’s pending membership means she can snoop around the group, but will she turn up a killer?  And what do the jeans on the victim mean?

I’ll admit, the purpose of the group, to preserve fashion by memorizing it and passing it down to the next generation, stretched plausibility a little, at least for me.  Oh yes, I get the connection with the title, but still.  Then again, I do some things others consider wacky, so I just rolled with it.  Besides, it’s not that much worse than other things that Samantha has found herself involved in.

Plus it did set up a fantastic plot.  I was very interested in what Samantha was going to uncover, and the twists kept me confused until she stitched all the pieces together at the end.  One aspect of the plot seemed to keep changing details, which is a common complaint of mine with this author.  But it was kept to that one part of the plot, and the further into the book we got, the more consistent it got.

Since this is book twelve in the series, we know Samantha and the other series regulars well.  We got to see the core characters again, and I loved their interactions.  I was also happy to see a couple of characters we haven’t seen for several books pop back up.  The new characters do their job of keeping us guessing, meanwhile, we see more growth for Samantha.

As always, there are plenty of laughs.  I love Samantha’s sense of humor, which comes through in her first-person narration and the dialogue with the other characters.

And jeans?  Well, I’m not going to spoil anything, but we did get a bit of history on the garment.  Not surprisingly, I learned a lot about it.  But at least I recognized some of the company names mentioned here for a change.

Overall, Fahrenheit 501 is another fun case for Samantha Kidd to solve.  No matter your relationship with fashion, you’ll find yourself turning pages quickly to find out just how things turn out.

Here are the rest of the Samantha Kidd Mysteries in order.

1 comment:

  1. I'm a big fan of snooping with a group of people. This sounds like a fun read and I always enjoy Diane Vallere's books.

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