Customer Reviews

Wicked Weaves (Renaissance Faire Mysteries, No. 1)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I really like these cute quick read mystery books, and this book had potential, but fell a little short of keeping my attention in a steady manner. Told in the first person, it was a little confusing in areas, and choppy. There were places where the characters' conversations really made no sense. One example of this is that the main character, a woman named Jessie, has a twin brother who constantly borrows money from her. In one "scene" she and two others are sitting in the Renaissance Village cafe and the brother comes in, already owing her $100, and asks her for another $20 for a date he has. Jessie becomes embarrassed and flat out denies him anymore funds. The brother gets irritated and Jessie's "love interest" spots him the $20 to shut him up. Afterward, Jessie and her beau leave the cafe and the beau proceeds to tell her how he understands and that her brother just needs to be more responsible and learn to stand on his own two feet. Did I mention Jessie and her brother are in their 30s? This completely contradicts the fact that the beau just loaned him money which he will probably never see again! There are several of these examples throughout the book which to some may seem minor, but leave me shaking my head.

Another issue I have with the book is there is a constant sexual tension or insinuation in almost every interaction that does not deal directly with the mystery storyline. Okay, she's hot for this guy, we get it. It really doesn't add to the plot, and they overtalk wanting to go back to his place; they have time to, they don't have time to, she wishes they had time to. Like too much swearing, gets old after awhile.

Lastly, there were some serious editing errors, which kind of jump off of the pages when you are reading. Some sentences I had to go back and read four or five times and I still don't think they were worded right, and some flat out don't make sense. There is the inconsistent switch between "Ms." and "Miz" (both used for Jessie) and a married character is referred to as both "Mrs." and "Ms." in different places. And editor should have caught this, and if this was an attempt to change things up, grammatically it was bad judgment because it looks like someone does not know proper grammer and the inconsistencies are annoying.

There are also quippy thoughts Jessie has that contain information that is simply incorrect. For example, in trying to be funny the authors wrote in a cute thought of Jessie's that "when the egg split" she got the brains and her twin brother got the looks. Fraternal twins do not come from the same egg so there is no such thing as identical fraternal twins where they would share or split anything. A factual reference that I would consider rather embarrassing as an author to not know. This may have been an instance where the authors assume you get the joke but it would have been more effective leaving out "when the egg split," but worded as it was, it was as if they just didn't know the biological aspect of fraternal twins. Again, a minor thing, but makes me question the authenticity of information presented. Even in fiction, an author needs to do his or her homework and stay true to the facts of these kinds of "minor" details, if for nothing else than to just not look ignorant. An editor should have caught that reference immediately.

All in all, it was a cute book and I will probably read the rest when they come out in this series. You just have to overlook the editing mistakes, somewhat contradictory actions of the characters, and not assume that any kind of historical or scientific reference, in any form, is accurate.

I always hold out hope for the books following the first one because there is room to expand and grow the characters. I would have expected more from authors who already had books out, but I haven't given up on this series.

I am not sure how our writing due, Jim & Joyce Laverne, come up with the locals and interesting characters for all their wonderful books, but I am sure glad that they do. In this new book "Wicked Weaves," the entire story takes place in an amusement park called, "Renaissance Faire Village." What a place this is. All of the characters that work, and live there are in costume of the Medieval times. We have a King and Queen and all their noble servants in toe. We also have craftsmen of the era and shops along the way for tourists to shop in as if they were in that time. I found just this part of the storyalone extremely interesting before I even got to the mystery. I actually wanted to visit Renaissance Faire Village myself.
Our main character, Jessie Morton, worked at the Village every summer. Every year she would work with one of the craftsmen learning their trade. This year she was with, Mary, a woman who weaved Gullah basket. Besides leaving the weave Jessie helped Mary in her store.
Mary was a mysterious woman that no one really knew much about, and it wasn't long into the read before a dead body is discovered. Whose body? None other than Mary's husband whom she has not seen for years and years. Immediately suspicion is thrown on Mary as the killer and Jessie is also implicated. Certainly not something she wanted to experience. All clues seem to confirm that Mary is guilty, but Jessie knows this could not be so; the problem, how to prove it? And just what about her past is Mary trying so hard to keep hidden? Soon it begins to unravel as her brother and son show up in the story. Who knew Mary had a son? And why was he never in Mary's life before? Ah! the plot thickens to the delight of the reader...
To add a little spice to the story we are taken into the rollercoaster love life of Jessie and Chase, who also works at the Village. The authors did a good job merging the characters relationship with the mystery going on in the rest of the story. It ran quite smoothly and as I said, added just the right amount of seasoning to give the story warmth.
So, just who did kill Mary's husband? Don't expect to figure this one out early on in the read because you will be very disappointed in yourself. You just end up having too many questions and not enough answers to know until the very end. As always, Joyce and Jim have done it again with a top-notch mystery read that is laced with a tad of romance, exceptional, colorful characters and local, and a surprise ending. Just a great book from beginning to end, and one I am proud to recommend.

I like the characters and the setting. However, Jessie, who is working on her Phd dissertation, thought and acted more like a seventeen year old than a 20 something woman. I found her petty and self-centered at odd times and at other times lacking in sympathetic understanding. If her maturity matched her education level this would be a good series.

The setting for this mystery is unique and was a pleasure "to visit" for a while. I liked the characters' witty names for their shops and overall this was a great read. I will be looking for the next installment.
The authors' Poison Petals series is great too.

I was a member of the Society for Creative Anachronism in my younger days, and I thought the idea of a Renaissance Fair mystery sounded appealing. Boy, was I wrong! The heroine is a bimbo who has slept with nearly every guy in the village and is after the last holdout. The hero is a bailiff working for peanuts who used to be a lawyer and drives a fancy car. The change in careers is never explained. I nearly stopped reading it twice, and I wish I had saved myself the time, because by the end, I found myself hoping more of these flat, uninteresting people would be killed off.

Assistant Professor Jessie Morton has spent the school year teaching history and her summer moths apprenticing to an artisan at the Myrtle Beach Renaissance Village; this time she is tutored by basket maker Mary Shift. Each summer she has a romantic fling, but so far not with the bailiff Chase, who she is attracted to; she hopes this summer is their time together.

One day Jessie observes Mary arguing with a man who acts like he knows her intimately. Later she learns that a similar looking man is dead with one of Mary's weaves tied tightly around his neck. The victim was her husband Joshua who tossed her out years ago; his brother Abraham came to inform Mary that Josh is coming and she needs to send him home or he will be an outcast like her. Abraham had taken Jah, Mary's son into his home and pretended the lad was his son who actually died. He claims that Mary killed him instead of nursed him. The police suspect Mary killed her spouse, but Jessie thinks otherwise. Chase helps her investigate and they soon find an additional suspect besides Mary, Abraham, and Jah but no evidence pointing to anyone except Mary.

The Renaissance Faire mystery is the start of a new exciting amateur sleuth series from the Lavene team; known for their "poisoned" Peggy Lee Garden tales. Part of the fun of this solid whodunit is the vivid description of a the Renaissance Village; anyone who has not been to one will want to go as the Lavene duo makes it so enticing; in fact they make their South Carolina based Faire sound similar to the delightful Georgia Renaissance Festival. The protagonist is an interesting graduate student who feels comfortable in her endeavors when she classifies them into neat compartments; Chase refuses to be filed away as a summer fling as he wants more from her. The whodunit is cleverly developed so that four suspects linked to the basket weaver (Mary's lover being the other) surface with motives while clues seemingly to only point to Jessie's teacher.

Harriet Klausner

There are a number of errors in this book(proofreaders, where art thou?) but the one that really annoyed me was when Jessie constantly remarks how puzzled she is that she is so different from her twin, Tony, because they come from the same egg that split into two in the womb. Any middle-school kid knows that if twins are a boy and a girl, they are from two separate eggs. Only identical twins, two boys or two girls, result from the splitting of the same egg. On the whole, I found the book reasonably interesting but I'm not rushing to read any others in the series. For one thing, Jessie is a bit of a slut, and I could do without all the sleeping-around that goes on. It doesn't add to the story.

Not the worst book I have read but certainly not the best. There were some portions of the book that I loved and some that irritated the mess out of me. The setting is unique and vividly described. I completely enjoyed being immersed in Renaissance Village and would love to visit a similar place. The characters, however, need some serious work. There are inconsistencies everywhere and the only character who seems to behave the same way all the time is Chase. The main character, Jessie, keeps flip-flopping on who she thinks the murderer is and seems to forget that just a couple of pages before she suspected someone and is suddenly surprised to discover herself suspecting them. Also, she's kind of a flake and seems really immature, often getting mad with no real explanation of why. Other characters also blow hot and cold for no apparent reason, would it kill the authors to spend as much time on character development (and actually sharing that with the readers) as they did on world building. I'm also confused about the whole king and queen rule in the village, is it 24 hours a day? Because it sure seems like it.

The editing on this book was also just awful! Aren't editors supposed to catch plot holes and inconsistencies?

I likely will read the next book in the series if I can get it from my swap site, but unless they find a new editor and flesh out the characters more (and make their actions make sense) I probably won't spend any more money on these books.

I really wanted to like this book better than I did. I've taken children and grandchildren to Renaissance Faires, so I expected to enjoy the setting. It was well-handled, except that inconsistencies kept popping up. In one place, Bo-Peep had an automated sheep because live animals except for the jousting horses had been banned from the ground; then she showed up with a flock that had been sheared in the spring, so I had to go back and look again for the first passage.

The heroine's emotional insecurities were enough to tempt a person to admonish this supposed Ph.D. candidate to pull on her big girl panties and deal with it. Okay, so she has a history of short-term relationships. She didn't need to agonize over and over and over and over and . . .

As someone who annually visited the local Renaissance Faire in my younger days, I thought it would be fun to read about it from an insider's point of view. Indeed, the conceit of living the Renaissance life 24/7 is the best part of the story. Unfortunately, the writing is rather clunky and it's hard to care whodunit. However, the atmosphere and details are fun. Not a total waste of time, but a bit of a disappointment.