Seams Deadly is a first in series cozy mystery focused on sewing. I learned some new terms like sewist, someone who sews whether male or female.
Lydia is the main character. She seems a bit lost and a lot naive. She’s 40 and doesn’t seem to know how to manage life. Lydia has some good potential for growth as a character, but it didn’t really happen in this book.
There are a couple murders. What is interesting to me is that no one even suggests trying to figure out what is happening until about 60% of the way through the book (ebook).
I wasn’t surprised by the culprit, but I also felt like there wasn’t much that pointed to any one person as the murderer.
I have no strong feelings about this book. I’m not overly fond of Lydia. The author has created an interesting cast of characters in small mountain town Peridot, Georgia. I think the series good go well, but this isn’t the strongest first in series book.
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the opportunities to review the book.

I think there's potential and the pets are lovely. Unfortunately I found it quite slow and it took me a bit to warm up to Lydia as I found her a bit juvenile at the beginning.
I will try to read another book in this series, this one is not m cup of tea
Many thanks to the publisher for this ARC, all opinions are mine

Dollycas's Thoughts

Lydia Barnes needs a fresh start after finding her husband in bed with another woman and her friend Fran has the perfect way to do that. She invites Lydia and her dog Charlie to move to Peridot where she has an apartment and a job just waiting for her. Fran owns the Measure Twice Fabric store and Lydia loves to sew so she is excited to work there. The apartment is right upstairs too. Fran may have gone too far though in setting Lydia up on a date with her new neighbor Brandon Ivey. The date was pretty awful and didn't end with a kiss. It ended with a fist bump. Since she still has to live next to the guy she decides to take him some brownies she had baked. That didn't go as planned either. She finds Brandon dead and the weapon links her to his murder.

She hopes her new friends can help her stitch together some clues to get her off the list of suspects. But before they do another body is found inside the fabric store.

Why is the killer framing Lydia for their crimes? Has she been in town long enough to make a real enemy? Is she going to be the next victim?

____

Lydia Barnes was an unlikable main character at the start. She came off to me as much younger than the 40 years she is supposed to be. She was sure to tell everyone she met about her cheating ex and was very querulous at times. I had a hard time believing she was a former middle school teacher with her escaping into her head so much and her daydreaming about the clothes she would make. I also didn't like the way she wanted to change her friend's store from the start and why didn't the woman have a car? Soon I adjusted my thinking to just let her be because the characters the author surrounded her with really caught my interest.

I really like Fran. The woman had a huge heart and really opened doors for Lydia and others. One of my dreams that was never fulfilled was to own my own fabric store so living vicariously through Fran was fun even when she was dealing with the pitfalls of owning a business. Heather, Fran's assistant was interesting too. She really wasn't happy about all the attention Fran was giving Lydia and if I had been her I would have been upset too. Lydia's new friend Cynde, a court stenographer and a shop regular, was an interesting character as well. The whole supporting cast, aside from the creepy neighbor who lived on the other side of Lydia, developed so well over the course of the story while leaving room for them to grow as the series continues.

The mystery was well-plotted. I enjoyed the way the friends all gathered to discuss the case and their theories. I was able to pin down the killer before the scary reveal but I needed to have the motive spelled out for me and it was surprising.

One subplot stole my heart. Lydia rescued a kitty from a shelter that had been there a long time. I was so happy that Baby Lobster found a home.

Peridot, Georgia is a charming little Southern town full of some delightful residents even the long-winded Clark but he grew on me pretty fast. I enjoyed the way the group came together in the end at the donut shop to show their support for Lydia going forward. It was also a time for any loose threads to be explained.

I was drawn to this series because of the sewing theme. Prior to an accident in 2001 I was what I guess you would call now quite a "sewist" making most of my and my family's clothes and I loved everything about constructing a quilt. I loved most of the sewing references but sometimes they were a little too detailed and I felt that may detract non-"sewists" from enjoying the story. I did understand fully the way we who sew care about our sewing sheers and that they are only used for cutting fabric and nothing else including paper. All these years later my children still remember the lessons and the punishment they received if they were caught using my sheers.

Seams Deadly had a few hiccups but it has set this series off to a satisfactory start. The ending has set up a real twist for the series and I am very intrigued to see what Ms. Bailey has planned for her characters. I hope we learn why Lydia wasn't awarded a car in her divorce settlement, in this day and age there has to be a reason. I am rounding my rating up to 4 starfish.

This is apparently a debut and the beginning of a cozy mysteries series set in a small town in North Georgia. Our heroine, Lydia, is a very recent transplant from Atlanta–and even more recently divorced from her cheating snob of an ex-husband.

The story is narrated in third person, past tense, but it sticks so closely to Lydia’s point of view, and we spend so much time inside her head, that it could just as easily have been first person.

Leaving aside the horror of going on a date with your next door neighbor, whom you barely know–and a date arranged by a friend older enough that you look up to her almost like a mother, to boot–the first chapter feels a bit awkward and scattered, what with setting up the basics of the story and introducing some of the characters, as Lydia gets ready to have dinner with the soon-to-die Brandon.

It turns out that that Lydia’s thought processes are both awkward and scattered, almost meandering, and therefore so it the narration; it’s not quite stream-of-consciousness territory, but it’s definitely not linear. I wonder if the reader is supposed to conclude that Lydia is somewhere in the spectrum: she’s constantly second-guessing her social interactions (and berating herself for being awkward), she often gets lost in her own thoughts in the middle of conversations, and the way she focuses on her new hobby–sewing clothes–almost to the point of obsession.

This can make the book slightly tedious, as other characters, or things happening around her, keep yanking Lydia out of her wandering thoughts and into the world around her. At the same time, it’s clear that the author has more than a passing acquaintance with sewing, both the making of quilts and garments, and the more esoteric aspects of the craft are cleverly woven into the story (Lydia explaining dress shears to the cop, for example).

There is a strange kind of dichotomy in the book, in that Lydia’s characterization is pretty well done–her reactions when she finds Brandon’s body, as she is interrogated by the cops, as she tries to navigate being the obvious suspect while still living in small town Georgia and interacting with her acquaintances there, and so on–while all the other characters feel flat in comparison.

I guess it could be argued that that is because we see them through Lydia’s eyes, and she would be the first to say that she is not the best judge of character (she alternatively thinks of everyone she knows in town as “her friend so-and-so”, then realizes that she knows next to nothing about them), but I’m not convinced that’s enough to justify the difference; it feels like a cop out.

The mystery is solved at about 80% of the way in–though the murderer was pretty obvious almost from the moment they show up on the page–and the rest of the book is about Lydia working out her feelings about the town and the people there, and her future.

I, to put it mildly, was not pleased about this–it’s not just that we have already spent a good two hundred pages in Lydia’s head as she does just that, over and over, but that this last part is tacked on, like a weird extra long epilogue, with the goal of establish the core cast of characters for the series to come.

The small town setting is a bit more realistic than the usual run of cozy mysteries, acknowledging how small businesses in such towns often cling to viability by their fingernails; however, the cast of characters is entirely white people, while set in a state where a good third of the population is Black; and there’s quite a bit of the “people in small towns are nicer, even when they’re nosy and judgmental” thing going on.

Beyond this, the book needed a good editing pass to clean out the repetition; even taking it as a given that Lydia is on the autism spectrum, and that therefore her thoughts tend to circle around to her areas of interest, there are a few things showing up ten or twelve times in her internal dialogue–Lydia’s age, how she doesn’t care about her weight (while focusing constantly on what and how she eats), her boss Fran’s new living arrangements–, each time phrased as if it were the first, that just don’t need to be there.

So while I read this book pretty much in a couple of sittings, I don’t think I will continue with the series, though I might try the author again if she writes something else.

Seams Deadly gets a 6.00 out of 10

Lydia Barnes worked at Measure Twice, a fabric store in the small town of Peridot in Georgia. Fran, her boss, had even set her up in the apartment above the shop. Now, with her faithful dog Charlie by her side, Lydia felt like she'd come home. But that was before she found the body of a recent, disastrous first date, and suddenly she was a suspect in his death. But another body, this time in Measure Twice, had Lydia thinking someone was trying to frame her. And they were doing a good job. Would she and her friends be able to find the killer before Lydia herself ended up dead?

Seams Deadly is the 1st in A Measure Twice Sewing Mystery series by new to me author Maggie Bailey, and unfortunately I didn't enjoy it. I skipped the many details about sewing; it was slow to take off and when it did, there weren't any fireworks. The only things I liked were the dog and the crazy cat! I won't be looking out for #2 when it comes out.

With thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for my digital ARC to read in exchange for an honest review.

Seams Deadly is book #1 in the Measure Twice Sewing Mystery series by Maggie Bailey.

Lydia is starting over in Peridot, Georgia which is the home of her favorite shop, Measure Twice. A first date that does not go well, especially when she finds him dead.

This is a good start to a new series. I liked the characters and Baby Lobster. I enjoyed the sewing theme and the mystery kept me guessing until the end. I look forward to the next book.

Thank you to the author, Crooked Lane Books, and NetGalley for the Advanced Reader Copy (ARC) copy of this book and I am voluntarily leaving an honest review.

I really enjoyed this first in series. Lydia has moved to the idyllic Peridot, Georgia after finding her husband in bed with her assistant. Her friend, Fran happens to own a sewing shop in Peridot and hooks her up with an apartment above her shop and a job. Fran sets Lydia up with local hottie, Brandon Ivey who happens to be her neighbor. The date is a total flop, but Lydia tries to make the best of it by bringing Brandon some home made brownies after the failed date, but finds him murdered in his apartment.

Really enjoyed the characters in this book and the small town feel of Peridot.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC of this book.

Seams Deadly is the first book in the A Measure Twice Sewing Mystery by Maggie Bailey.

After divorcing her cheating husband, Lydia moved from Atlanta to Peridot, a town in the mountains of North Georgia. Lydia, who enjoys sewing, is hired by Fran to work in her fabric, yarn shop, and sewing/quilting shop, Measure Twice.

Lydia lives above Mesure Twice in an apartment. Fran sets out to fix Lydia up on a date with Brandon, manager of the local bookstore, who lives in the other apartment above Measure Twice. Lydia isn’t looking to date anyone just yet but decides to go on a date, which is better than arguing with her boss. The date turned out to be not bad but also not that good. After returning from the date, Lydia decides to be neighborly and takes some brownies she had already baked to Brandon. As she crosses the hall to his apartment, she notices his door is ajar; pushing the door open, she sees Brandon’s body lying on the floor. There are scissors from Measure Twice sticking in his chest. The police seem to think they have an open and shut case against Lydia. Lydia will have to begin her own investigation to be able to clear her name. When she finds a second body in Measure Twice, she needs to step up her investigation before she is thrown in jail and they throw away the key.

I found the story to be well-written and plotted. Plenty of twists and turns kept me guessing until the final reveal. I found the characters to be interesting and believable. I would like to learn more about them in future books. I particularly enjoyed the cat that Lydia rescued. When the cat was adopted, it had the moniker of Baby Lobster. Baby Lobster turns out to be a handful when first brought home.

I will be watching for the next book in the series.

The starting of a new cozy mystery series. Safe, small town, quirky townsfolk, a new character and a dead body. I enjoyed this book it kept me hooked to know the mystery and who the killer was. Overall a good beginning to a new series. I hope it continues.

“What’s this about a lobster, miss?”

Out of the fire into a bigger fire? All Lydia is looking for is a quiet life in Peridot where she can live in peace and sew. Instead she finds two dead bodies and all of her new friends are acting squirrely. A promising start to a new series set in the Blueridge mountains of northern Georgia.

This series definitely has lots of potential and I liked the key players aka Lydia’s new friends in town and Fran, of course, her good friend who’d taken her in. But someone in town appeared to have it in for Lydia after framing her for two murders, so like any good cozy sleuth, she knew it was gonna be up to her to get her name cleared for good. Fran was really an awesome friend, not super warm or anything which definitely isn’t a Southern trait, lol. But later when I found out why she’d been uptight, I figured she deserved a break. Cynde was actually my fave of Lydia’s new friends. She had every reason to be a little bitter, but she was warm and welcoming.

I was never sure whodunit until the reveal which was super tense and I kept wondering how Lydia was gonna get out from under this mess. But never underestimate a rescue cat named Baby Lobster because she was definitely named that for a good reason! Once her name was cleared and Lydia got a little time away, she was back and ready to go. Toward the end was my fave way to wrap up a cozy with food, friends and fellowship when the crew as Lydia called her friends gathered at the donut shop to show Lydia that they honestly did care about her even if she felt she wasn’t too loved. And she got to take care of any loose threads of the case or questions they had. I really liked what happened at the very end and now I’m eager to read the next book. This book releases September 5, 2023.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an ARC of this book provided by Crooked Lane via NetGalley, and my opinions are my own.

3.5 stars

Welp, I totally called it. Not the reasoning behind the murders but at least the person who committed them. The behavior was just too insane to me 😅

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an arc of this book.

***SPOILER***

It was the only brisket dinner. That is absolutely insane behavior and the thing that made me suspect him. Also it’s probably the only thing I’m going to remember about this book 😂

I’m a huge cozy fan and love to start new series and get to know the characters. This is a new to me author and I enjoyed her writing style. I loved the characters, especially the pets and the mystery was intriguing. It was also fun to learn about sewing! Highly recommend this one for my cozy fans and I’ll definitely read the upcoming books in the series.

I am sorry to say I could not get into this book. When Lydia finds her husband cheating on her she leaves everything behind and heads for a small town she only visited a time or two. The local sewing shop owner gives her a job, rents her an apartment and then later sets her up on a date. Seems fast but whatever. When her date who is also her neighbor ends up murdered later that night and she finds the body she ends up being the prime suspect. I did not like the writing style of this book. I found it boring and contrived. The characters were not really likable for me.

4/5 stars: This is the debut entry in the Measure Twice Sewing Mystery series which takes place in a small Georgia town and it's a Crafting Cozy Mystery. Bailey's mystery blends just the right balance of suspects, clues and red herrings that will have you stumped right to the end of the book. In addition, Bailey's characters are incredibly likable; 40 year old Lydia, a former teacher and recent divorcee, is a delight. I also liked reading about the going on at the fabric shop and Lydia's love of sewing clothes. And let's not forget the cute animal sidekicks Lydia's dog, Charlie, and Baby Lobster, the cat. Can't wait to read more of Lydia's sleuthing adventure in the future!

I received this eARC thanks to NetGalley and Crooked Lane Books in exchange for an honest review. Publishing dates are subject to change.

Lydia and her pup Charlie have moved to Peridot, Georgia from Atlanta and she's happily settling in at Fran's fabric store and the apartment she's living in above it. And then- Brandon, the man with whom she had an odd date, is found with scissors from the store in his neck. Of course she's a suspect and that only gets worse when someone else is found in the store. No spoilers on that one. Peridot might seem like a town of nice people but...clearly not! This is pretty classic cozy territory with interesting details about sewing (I learned a few things). It's the start of a new series so the characters aren't as well rounded as you might like but I'm sure future installments will do that. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. A light read.

A pleasant cozy mystery. It kept me guessing. I didn't understand her lack of a car. Some peculiar characters live in this small town. I am curious as to where the series will go. Lots of potential. Interesting pets. Thanks to the publisher for providing a copy via NetGalley. My review is voluntary.

SEAMS DEADLY begins a new cozy series set in a small town in northern Georgia. Lydia Barnes has fled there after catching her husband in bed with her teaching assistant. She had visited before and enjoyed stopping in at Measure Twice, a quilting store. Now she's been offered a job there and she also rents the upstairs apartment.

When she is coerced into a date with Brandon, a younger man who works in the local bookstore, by her boss, she reluctantly agrees even though she knows she isn't over her cheating husband. The date is a failure since he's determined to talk only about his Great American Novel. After he walks her home and she walks her dog Charlie, she decides to drop off some brownies and discovers him dead at his desk. He was stabbed with a pair of sheers from Measure Twice.

The local police think she killed Brandon which has the effect of making her dissolve into tears and suffer from shock. She's so new in town that she can't think of anyone else who might be a suspect. However, a few conversations indicate that Brandon did have some enemies who are unfortunately all alibied.

When another murder occurs in the classroom of Measure Twice, Lydia is again the prime suspect. She needs to find the real killer in order to keep her place in this small town that really feels like home to her.

There were lots of things I liked about this story. I liked that Lydia rescues a cat named Baby Lobster from the local shelter. Baby Lobster has quite an interesting personality. I also liked the setting of the story. The main thing I didn't like about the story was the main character. She seems totally self-absorbed and very prone to break into tears all the time or go off daydreaming at the most inappropriate times. She was a really unlikeable character for me.

I'm not sure if I will continue with this series because I really didn't like the main character or most of the other characters. I don't think an interesting setting will be enough motivation for me to read more.

A lot of potential but it unfortunately didn't deliver in the end. I don't read a lot of cozy books and small town mysteries so this was kind of a new experience for me and I must say, I liked the atmosphere and the overall vibes. There was a great cast of side characters which definitely made this book more pleasant. I think the main mystery was well thought out, predictable but still could be enjoyable.

However the whole story was in my opinion too long and quite honestly boring. Although it took place over 2 or 3 action-packed days, I had to force myself to keep reading because it just wasn't interesting enough. Perhaps the subject of sewing just isn't for me but I think there were way too many descriptions and main character's thoughts that were completely unrelated to the plot and didn't lead anywhere. The writing also suffered from repeated words and sentences, and some bigger and smaller mistakes (e. g. at one point Lydia is talking to Clark and she mentions finding Clark's body). The main character was, in my opinion, insufferable - very bland, uninteresting and irritating at times. Also her behavior and attitude when it comes to the cat she adopted was ridiculous and irresponsible - and while that might be just my sensitivity talking, it did taint the whole reading experience (seriously, why even adopt a cat if you're gonna leave them in your apartment and not even try to make them feel comfortable and safe?).

Overall, I think the idea was good, the book had a lot of potential thanks to the mystery and atmosphere but unfortunately ended in disappointment due to the writing and the main character.

Lydia Barnes i caught her ex-husband cheating on her with her teaching assistant. She's starting over in the North Georgia Town of Peridot and works in a fabric shop call Measure Twice run by her friend Fran.

Fran fixes her up on date with Brandon from the local bookstore. They had a lackluster first date and she then later finds him dead in his apartment, she becomes the police's prime suspect. I was excited about having a main character be in her 40's and full figured. I found Lydia a little self-absorbed and whiny. She just seems to fall into situations/information. She really doesn't actively investigate the crime as most sleuths of cozy mysteries do. The story moved a slowly for me. I also can't say that I felt strongly connected to any of the characters, Although I love that she rescues pets and I love that Baby Lobster was my favorite character in the book. I also had a hard seeing where this would go as an ongoing series.

Overall, I enjoyed the story. I thank NetGalley and Crooked Lane Books for the opportunity to read and give my honest review.