Hooked on Murder (A Crochet Mystery #1) (2024)

If I didn't really love crochet and know a lot about it, I probably would've given the book 1 star instead of 2. I enjoyed the parts that dealt with learning the craft. I didn't much care for the stupid antics of the main character and how she actually broke the law a few times to snoop. There's one thing to be curious, it's another to be foolhardy and have no regard for one's own safety.

That's one of my biggest problems with a lot of these craft genre mysteries. The protagonists tend to pull really dumb stunts when it comes to trying to solve the crime on their own. Not to mention, the whole romance part of the novel didn't make me happy, either.

So, again, if you like crochet, it's a okay. If you don't, you probably won't like it.

If you want a perfectly lovely, cozy murder mystery on the level of a MacMillan and Wife TV episode, then Hooked on Murder is your cup of tea. Molly is a 40-something widow who is working in a bookstore running the events schedule. She is also the one who set up the Tarzana Hookers crochet club to begin meeting in the bookstore. So when the fouding Tarzana Hooker ends up dead, found by Molly, and Molly becomes the main suspect, of course she is going to learn how to crochet and become an amateur sleuth.

It is a pleasant read, lots of red herrings, but there is a little something missing for me: depth. As a crocheter, I did laugh at the knitters who slammed crochet and got their wrists slapped. That all rang true, but I wanted to know more about the characters. Why were Dinah and Molly friends? Why won't Molly commit? There were sparks with her and Barry, but not like Morelli and Stephanie (The Stephanie Plum series by Janet Evanovitch). The lawyer at the end seems to provide an intriguing chance at a love triangle, but Molly seems too sad and confused to really carry it off. Perhaps giving her only a year after her husband's death was not enough time. There need to be more emotional connections, more small, graphic details and not just descriptions of what people are wearing. Adele is annoying, but in a two-dimensional way. She has a moment with Molly when it really seems we are about to see into her in a more detailed way, but Hechtman takes the easy road by having Adele go back to her usual self at the end of the conversation. When Dinah is in the yarn store and finds herself with a bag of yarn she just bought and doesn't understand why, it is easy for the author to have Adele say that all crocheters find them selves buying yarn all the time. But it didn't really describe that sense of longing for the yarn, so the touch and texture and being drawn to that particular shade and knowing that somewhere there is a pattern out there that you will use to create the perfect gift or the perfect scarf or the perfect, whatever. That sense of yarn addiction was missing. And if it is a crochet murder mystery, the yarn addiction is going to need to get more pronounced.

There is a lot to like about this series, and if you want just a cozy mystery, this will do just fine.

Don't buy this book if you like crochet. It is maddening how many times they discuss how to make a chain. There is no discussion of any interesting stitches and the entire book is focused on getting ONE granny squares afghan done (by multiple, not likeable people.) Snore. And yet, that's slightly more interesting than the mystery. I really wanted to like this book since it was a gift and I love crochet but the writing is stilted, cliched and dull and the characters no better. As a cozy it had all the cozy tropes but none of the cozy feeling. I did not care about the victim, the accused or the murderer. The setting was probably the best part and yet I have zero interest in returning to this Tarzana bookshop community.

What do you do when you think you might be losing your job, things are rocky with the boyfriend being too pushy and you inadvertently become a murder suspect? Why crochet of course! Excellent characters draw you in, but the plot keeps you on the hook! I am really excited to have found this series as it appears that it is all on audiobook so I'll have a book to listen to while on the go for awhile and a good book at that! I can't wait to see what happens in the next book!

Source: Borrowed from the library via Libby ebook
Content warnings: fatphobia and transphobia

It was another book in this series (Behind the Seams) that started my recent interest in cozy mysteries last fall. I picked it at the library despite being out of order. I enjoyed that book but had trouble keeping all the side friends straight when they were all introduced at once so I wanted to go back and start at the beginning of this series.

Hooked on Murder starts off right in the action with Molly finding the body immediately, which I think I prefer over the lengthy setup/info dumps that first installments often have. I like how this is set in a real place and is more urban/suburban than the fictional small towns many cozies are set in (they're nice, but can start blending together after a while). I like how Hechtman describes all the characters' houses, shops, restaurants, and other places. It makes it easy to picture the scene. I also like that the MC is 48 and a widow, older than many of the 20s/30s characters and a bit of a refreshing change.

I knew the murderer instantly just due to the "hey, this character isn't in the later book" spoiler by omission, but that might have been the reason I found this book a bit boring and slow at times. I liked the crochet parts, but don't like the whole overdone crochet vs. knitting "war."

This is not a culinary-subgenre cozy, but Molly is a good baker and cook. The food descriptions sound appealing without getting bogged down in too many details. Unfortunately this is somewhat ruined by Molly making negative comments her body/weight and what she and other characters are eating. I wish this wasn't a factor in so many cozy mysteries.

I don't like the romance parts in this series much because I find Barry really unlikable and don't think he and Molly are a good match. The cop boyfriend is another trope I could really do without.

Diversity: No characters are explicitly described as anything other than white, though some physical descriptions are vague. Molly and Barry's families are Jewish. All characters whose relationship status is mentioned are in heterosexual relationships. But this brings me to my next point...

I was totally unprepared for 2 out of the blue transphobic comments in this book. I understand that characters can have flaws and don't have to be perfect, but one was dialog from one of the crochet ladies that no other characters reacted to or challenged, and the other was the MC's internal narration, which doesn't convince me it's not the author's view. Read on for more details...

1. Cee Cee laughs and says "typical soap opera" at her actor boyfriend filming a scene where his "son has just come home after changing from John to Joan." I might be willing to accept the misgendering (still calling Joan his son) as confusion rather than intentionally hurtful if not for Cee Cee laughing and...

2. Molly is trying to find her son Samuel at his music gig as she knows the mall he is playing at but not exactly where. They stop in a restaurant and there is a woman singer in a sequined gown. Molly can't find her son there but is "relieved the one in sequins isn't Samuel."

Considered dropping another star, but my overall feeling about the book was "okay", so I may skip ahead to the later books if I continue in this series.

I'm a crocheter, not a knitter, so I was excited to see this book on the library shelves... and to see it was part of a series, too. I'm not a fan of mysteries but I enjoyed Joanne Fluke's mysteries so maybe I'd just never run into a "good" mystery series before.

And I still haven't. In a way, the book reminded me too much of Joanne Fluke's mysteries. The sleuth in both books dates a cop and happens upon a body. The sleuth hides evidence and gets in the way of the law and, thus, solves the mystery. The sleuth gets and keeps her man by feeding him good, homecooked meals.

By the end of the book, I was tired of the phrases involving "the rolling of the eyes." I work with teenagers and I'm tired of eye rolling, much less reading about grown women in their 40s and 50s who roll their eyes.

As an experienced crocheter, the free pattern wasn't inspiring. The free recipe wasn't either. The recipes by Joanne Fluke are delicious.

This was a pretty good read, there just seemed to be a lot left out and then at times too much thrown in. I did enjoy the characters, and the lead, Molly Pink, is near to my age and a widow, trying out the dating scene again, so I could relate somewhat. I am looking forward to the next book in the series. Hopefully it will flow better.

Molly Pink, a widow, has two grown sons and a job at a book store. She has a special friend, a detective who is divorced and has a teenage son. Molly and her best friend join a crochet group that is making an afghan for charity, even though they just learned how to crochet the night before joining the group. This should be a rich, full life for anyone, but somehow, Molly manages to enrich it. She finds a murder victim, an acquaintance, and immediately becomes a person of interest in the crime. She barely stays one step ahead of major trouble in trying to clear her name. There is also trouble in the romance department, and a handsome lawyer may some addition interest to that problem. This debut novel in this series has a lot going for it, including delightful characters in a cozy setting.

I liked this just as much as her knitting series, although, it wasn't as funny. I really didn't like Molly's son Peter. He is way too pretentious and snobbish for me and the way he talks to his mother is appalling. It was nice to read a book with crochet in it, rather than knitting. I know how to do both, but I much prefer to crochet. LOL I'm hoping the next one has better things happening between Barry and Molly, though, as Barry doesn't seem to see things the way Molly does.

This is the first in the Crochet Mystery series, and I liked it very much. At first I was disappointed because the main character works in a bookstore and doesn't know anything at all about crocheting. She is the bookstore event planner and sets up for the crochet group that meets there. But she becomes involved in their group when their leader is murdered (within the first couple of pages of the book!) just before an afghan needs to be finished for a charity auction. Molly, of course, finds the body and gets embroiled in the investigation despite her boyfriend (a detective) and her grown sons asking her to stay out of it. Molly, though, is an ordinary middle-aged widow with doubts and questions about her life, and I like her laid back style. I was kept guessing about the murderer until the last few pages when the identity was revealed in a spectacular manner. I'll definitely read more from this series.

This is actually my second time reading this book, and I remember enjoying it much more the first time I read it. For me, the book was pretty boring and not well written, especially with overly repeated use of one action like eye rolling. I felt that there were a lot of parts that just seemed pointless which wound up slowing down the mystery. Then there were Molly's other actions, which wound up putting her in considerable danger, and yet it was perfectly acceptable for her to do so in the name of solving the mystery! I thought it was mostly just stupidity on her part. I got pretty annoyed at the knitter bashing too, especially seeing as how most crafting is falling by the wayside. I did enjoy the parts that dealt with learning the craft, though! The romance angle was very downplayed, and felt forced, and I couldn't really see what Molly saw in the detective. All in all, a bit of a disappointment, but I'll read the second book before passing judgement on the series.

I had to make myself keep reading the book till I finished it. I did not care for the main character at all. She read like she was 16, or 12, NOT closer to my "senior citizen" age as she was described. Only wanting to know who did the murder, ad if our protagonist would totally ruin her relationship with the "dream date" cop was what got me to the end of the book.

At some point, I may read the next in the series just to see if the stories and the main characters stay as awful as they were in this one. There is so much potential for a good story here.

Too much crochet and not enough mystery.
Too much of me just NOT caring about these characters at all.
Too much of an overbearing son, and overbearing, assuming boyfriend and a crappy neighbor.
TOO. MUCH. CROCHET.

I will say this gets two stars because I had no idea who the murderer was [though I cared little by the time we got to the reveal] and that is always worth a star in my book.

If you love crochet or crafts in general, this is the book for you. If you don't [or if you don't like crappy characters who have little to no growth potential] RUN RUN RUN far, far, away.

:-)

Crochet tips and patterns along with a fun easy read, what's not to love? The characters make me smile and sometimes laugh out loud.

I didn’t like Molly right from the start. When she was being interviewed by a detective and the detective asked her how to spell her name she sarcastically thought “As if there are a lot of ways to spell Molly Pink”. I work at an answering service and get this response when I ask how to spell a name and it makes me mad. There are many ways to spell Molly besides the common one. What about Molli, Mollie, or Molley?

I also think her oldest son is very disrespectful.

Her boyfriend leaves a lot to be desired. He does not seem understanding at all about this being Molly’s first serious relationship since her husband died.

I don’t know if I will continue this series of not. I usually love any cozy mystery, but I did not find any of these characters likable.

But I also didn’t like Detective D.D. Warren from the Lisa Gardner series either, but loved the storyline of the crimes in each one. And now seven books in, I am starting to like her.

So who knows?

A little clunky and implausible at times, but it was fun I liked the descriptions of crocheting!

This cozy gets started real quick with Molly being a nice friendly short and delivering a lady her bag that she had forgotten. Sometimes being a good samaritan is not all it’s cracked up to be when she finds the lady dead.

And because she is found the body and the fact that she is dating one of the detectives, whom the other detective likes, things get a little sticky. Barry can’t work on this case so he leaves it to Detective Heather who seems to hate Molly.

It seems the only way that Molly is going to get out of this without handcuffs is to find out who murdered the deceased. It could have been her husband because it seems he has a lady friend, or it could be the assistant who is now the boss, or maybe someone from the crocheting club. Molly decides to join the club so she can see if she can figure anything out and actually ends up enjoying the craft.

I enjoyed Hooked on Murder and the author did a great job with the mystery. I really had no clue who had done it and I like it when I can’t figure them out. It has interesting characters and I know I will enjoy getting to know all those in the crocheting club.

Molly is an interesting MC but she does have some flaws. She has a perfectly nice man who wants to be with her but she keeps holding him off. I know she still has a problem with the death of her husband but I thought she was a bit rude to the guy at times. (If you don’t want a relationship to go the distance then don’t get in one, but that is my opinion.) I did feel sorry for her because Detective Heather really doesn’t like her and that doesn’t help when the cops think you did it.

Overall, I think this was a good start to a series and I will be continuing it as I have the next couple in the series to listen too. I am working hard at trying to catch up to all the cozy series I got on audio!

It was a cute little mystery that flew by pretty fast. I liked the added crochet talk, but I think if people aren't interested in the craft they may find this book to be a little boring in parts. Not that the author went into great detail about crocheting, but it was definitely a theme in the book.

The main character Molly Pink (yeah that's really her name) is a 48 year old widow. She works in a bookstore as the PR person. A local crocheting group uses the bookstore as their meeting place, and the leader of the group Ellen left her bag of supplies in the store after one session. Molly being the good citizen she is, stops off to give Ellen her things. Unfortunately, Ellen is dead, and at that moment the police come in as Molly is leaning over to check for a pulse. With evidence mounting against Molly, and her detective boyfriend insisting he needs to stay out of it, Molly decides to take matters into her own hands and clear her name and in the process learn to crochet.

I will be looking into the rest of the series :)

I'm going to have to learn to crochet.

An errand to return a bag of crochet hooks to someone lands Molly in the midst of a murder investigation. Her attempts to snoop in a bid to find out who really committed the murder land Molly into even deeper trouble. A second death clears her but leaves Molly with gobs of questions.

One of my sons thought this book would be ideal for me. Molly is the community relations person for a bookstore, a job I once held. At the beginning of the story, she knows nothing about crocheting; the crochet group is just one of the programs under her responsibility at the bookstore. She picks up a hook and gets hooked (I had a similar experience with loom knitting).

This book is a pretty straightforward cozy mystery. Our cast of characters is standard fare: single woman with a police officer boyfriend and her best friend who's up for any kind of mischief.

Pretty disappointed in this book. I never felt connected to the characters or the plot, nor could I see why the protagonist was so attractive to gorgeous bachelors who could have their pick of starlets and gorgeous blondes, but instead went with the somewhat older, somewhat rounder, inexplicably attractive widow. The plot was a bit thin, too, and "Detective Heather" was completely annoying -- as was the use of "OMIGOD!" Which, as my readers will know, I believe should be reserved for Archie comic books.

I'm actually a little disappointed with this book. I picked it up because I love cozies and several people in my family love to crochet, so I figured why not. The characters in this book were quite boring. They just come across plain and...simple I guess. Certainly not what I expected.

I'm not sure if I will continue with this series or not...

I read this for #MarchMysteryMadness. Fun mystery! I didn't figure it out before the reveal. It makes crochet sound easy. I might have to give it a try.

I loved this cozy. I’m still a novice at crocheting (I’m a better knitter) and had no idea there was such a a rivalry between the two yarn hobbies. This book made me think of all the luxurious skeins of yarn I got at my local auction. Some originally went for $50 a piece! But I digress. I had no idea who did it, loved the little bit of romance (although I often I pictured Barry as a man of African American descent) and loved all the crocheters in the hooker group. A fun little read.

I DID NOt finish, but I had to write a review.
I was so excited for this book.... I made it to page 25 and gave up. In those 25 pages I felt like pulling my hair out. I just couldn't see it getting better. What ticked me off was the pile on of random details and topic changes. And what sent me over the edge was the MC using the name Detective Heather unironically. Idk if that makes sense but I feel very passionately about this. 😭😂😅

I'm just starting to read "cozy" types of books. This one was interesting to me since I crochet but the story seemed to come to a standstill or be redundant at different parts of the book. It wasn't necessarily a "page turner" for me but it was an easy and mindless read that I could pick up and put down in between daily chores or errands.

Cozy mystery...
Molly Pink found over a dead body.
Everyone looking at her has the murderer but she said she didn't do it.

Getting into a crochet group with ladies that knew the victim she feels maybe she can find the killer.

Ugh just okay nothing amazing. Something quick to read.
Enjoy the crochet part of it since I'm a crocheter..

I made it about 11% in before I just stopped playing the audiobook. the amount of times I just stared at a wall after hearing a questionable line just didn't work for me, so I'm counting this as a dnf

Moderately entertaining, but not compelling. I can't relate to the "Hollywood-adjacent" setting, and the crochet tie-in is not very believable. Other details and plot points were also a bit far-fetched. I read to the end,but doubt I will pick up another in the series.

I listened to the audio version of this story and loved it. The characters were well developed, the plot strong and it included crocheting - one of my favorite hobbies!

Rating: PG-13
Language: some implied swearing, some outspoken profanity (but nothing crazy)
Recommend: yes

I love crocheting, so this start of the series intrigued me and i really liked the characters and references to crocheting.
The murder-mystery was nicely done and didn't expect the murderer in the end.
Looking forward to continue this cozy-series.