Summary:

Cardinal Woolsey’s Yarn Shop has been chosen to appear on TV
Great publicity!
Until a murder stops the cameras…

Celebrity knitting designer Teddy Lamont is coming to Cardinal Woolsey’s knitting and yarn shop in Oxford to run a special class that will be televised.

Lucy Swift can’t wait to host the popular, flamboyant designer and boost her business.

But from the first day things go wrong. One student is nothing but trouble on and off camera. When she winds up dead, the publicity Lucy was hoping for turns out to be the wrong kind.

Lucy and her band of undead amateur sleuths have to figure out who the killer is before her business winds up dead.

Goodreads

Thoughts:

Those of you who have been following me a while know how much I’m in love with Nancy Warren’s supernatural cozy mystery series – Vampire Knitting Club. These books are so much fun–well, as much as a book series centered around murders can be fun.  😀  Lace and Lies is the latest (book seven!) and it did not disappoint.

This time around Lucy is dealing with reality television! Her shop wins a contest to host a tv program featuring a celebrity knitter and a bunch of knitters who had also won contests to appear as guests on the program. One thing I really loved about this installment is how much knitting is featured. Now, I’m not a knitter and don’t really know the first thing about it, but this series really has me reconsidering (although I think I may be a bit like Lucy–a poor knitter). I do enjoy all the knitting in the book despite being an outsider in that regard. Also, it doesn’t feel like a VKC book without much of either the vampires, or knitting. So it’s always nice to have one or the other prominent in the story.

Speaking of vampires, I love the vamps in this book. Lucy is always careful to remember that they could turn into blood thirsty fiends, even if she’s friends (and family) with them. And dating one of them. Most of the vampires had smaller roles in this book, but Rafe was prominent as always. I find their relationship intriguing. I like that it’s progressing slowly because both of them are cognizant that it’s not practical, but they still do care for one another. I also love that Lucy continues to call Rafe on his antiquated ways for the most part, although a part of me wishes she’d put her foot down more instead of just complaining.

Lucy’s also dealing with some other feelings regarding her grandmother’s future. Since her grandmother is dead, for all intents and purposes, she can’t stay in the area too much longer, too many people will recognize her and only coming out sometimes is too restrictive. A solution has been proposed, but Lucy is hesitant because it would feel like losing her grandmother all over again. I continue to love how close Lucy is to her grandmother, while also starting to cultivate relationships with other members of her family (namely, her cousin and great-aunt).

I thought the mystery in this one was great, although the actual murder took a while to get to and then the wrap up felt a bit hasty. One thing I liked about this mystery is how it turned out there were so many connections between the characters. So even the folks that were innocent had things to hide, which made everyone rather suspicious. It helped with misdirecting things enough so that the real murderer wasn’t suspected. Good thing Lucy is getting really good at puzzling through clues! She’s becoming more of a seasoned investigator although I think she still relies a lot on instincts. Maybe it’s part of her witchy-ness.

Those of you wishing to jump into this series but thinking ‘oh no, book seven, how am I ever going to catch up?’, well, not to worry! These are quick reads and you can marathon them very easily. I think I read the first four of them in less than a week. Another bonus is that there’s not a huge wait between books! Book eight is scheduled to come out later this year. Every time a new VKC book comes out, it’s like a perfect little treat and I love it. If you’re on the fence about this series, I highly recommend it if you like cozy mysteries, vampires, or knitting.  4.5/5 stars.