Book Review: Knot of This World by Mary Marks (Quilting Mysteries #8)

Stars: 4 out of 5

Pros: Martha in a strong mystery

Cons: Some supporting characters a bit flat; weak ending (that still satisfies)

The Bottom Line:

Friend joining commune

What danger will Martha find?

Good series entry

Is Martha’s Friend Joining a Cult?

At one point, I intended to finish up Mary Marks’s Quilting Mysteries last year, but as the year got filled with books to read, I quickly decided to push that goal off a year.  In an effort to actually do this in 2024, I’m reading Knot of This World, the eighth in the series, early this year.  It was nice to be spending time with the characters again.

The series stars Martha Rose, an early retiree thanks to medical issues, who enjoys spending time quilting.  When the series opened, she had two good friends she got together with every Tuesday to quilt together.  Over the course of the series, that circle has expanded as Martha has gotten involved in several murders.

One of Martha’s long term quilting friends is Birdie Watson.  Birdie has recently gotten remarried, and she and her new husband are enjoying traveling in their motorhome, so Martha hasn’t seen her as much as she would like.  But Birdie is back in town with an announcement – she and her husband are going to sell everything they own and join a spiritualist commune in the mountains outside of Ojai, California.  Birdie has always had a counter cultural side, but this seems a bit extreme even for her.  When Martha starts to research it a bit, she discovers that there have been several mysterious disappearances up there, and some people speculate that murder is involved.

The more Birdie talks, the more alarm bells go off in Martha’s head.  In an effort to protect Birdie from making a mistake, Martha and their friend Lucy agree to go check out the commune one Saturday.  However, the leader is no where to be found. That is until Martha and the others stumble on his dead body.  What is Birdie getting into?

While these books aren’t paranormal cozies, elements of spiritualism have crept in to some of the books.  Given that this is a spiritualist community, that was a stronger element in this book than in some of the others.  Martha is a skeptic, however.  While I wasn’t happy about that element, I appreciated that Martha was questioning it as well.

I also appreciated that the plot relied more on Martha investigating than spiritualism.  There were some good twists and developments along the way.  I did feel the ending was a bit weak.  Having said that, I was satisfied when I turned the last page.

Birdie wasn’t in the last book, so I was glad to see her get some serious page time in this book.  I’ve always enjoyed her character.  Martha is a strong main character as well, and her fiancé continues to be great.  A few of the other supporting players were more in the background here.  I also feel like some of the characters introduced along the way haven’t really been fully developed yet and are flatter than Martha and some of the others.  I like them, I just feel like they could be more.  But this is a minor complaint.

As always, I enjoyed the very real Southern California locations that were worked into this book.  Ojai is a real place, although the commune isn’t.  It’s fun to spend some time closer to home in my fiction.

There are also some quilting tips at the end of the book.

Complaints aside, I did enjoy Knot of This World.  I’m looking forward to reading Martha’s final mystery later this year.

Here are the rest of the Quilting Mysteries.