A Magical Dressmaking Mystery Series by Melissa Bourbon

                 I am just eating up this mystery series.  Not literally since I do not think paper would taste very good and I do not want to hurt the books, but you know what I mean.  Once I finish one book in the series I put the next one on hold at the library.  At the moment I have read the first three, starting with Pleating for Mercy.  The sad thing is I think there are only four books in the series so far.  I am about to finish all there is too read!  Hopefully there is a fifth one in the works and it will come out soon.               

                Harlow Cassidy has returned to her hometown of Bliss, Texas after spending years in New York working in the fashion industry.  She has inherited her great-grandmother’s, Meemaw’s, house and opened a dressmaking shop.  Her grandmother and mother live nearby and they help Harlow when things get to be a bit too crazy.  They are all descendents of the legendary Butch Cassidy which would be interesting all on its own, but there is something else that makes this special.  Due to a wish Butch Cassidy made, all the women in his lineage possess a charm.  Harlow’s grandmother can communicate with goats.  Her mother has a special touch with plants.  Meemaw got whatever she wanted.  At first Harlow thinks she does not have a charm.  She does.  It just takes her a bit to figure out what it is and how to work with it.

                As Harlow works on her fashion creations, she also solves murders.  Not intentionally.  Harlow happens to be really good at coming across dead bodies.  While some would leave it up to the police to figure everything out, but Harlow cannot leave it alone.  She has to try to put the pieces together and discover what happened and why.

                There are some great characters in these books.  One of the best is Meemaw.  She haunts her old house where Harlow now lives and works.  Meemaw has an opinion about everything and communicates with Harlow in a variety of ways including banging on pipes and turning pages in books.  Then there is Will.  He is the really sweet handyman (actually an architect) Meemaw arranged to have fix things around the house.  In exchange Harlow is to teach Will’s daughter, Gracie, the craft of sewing.  Now keep in mind, Meemaw made these arrangements before she died and Harlow was still in New York without plans of returning to Bliss.  What Meemaw wants, Meemaw gets.  She definitely had an ulterior motive with this set up.               

                I really like what the author has done with Harlow.  All too often the main female character is gorgeous and perfect looking.  This is not the case with Harlow, which is good because the perfection thing gets really annoying.  Instead, Harlow wears glasses that she sometimes has to push up her nose, is not super thin, and her hair gets frizzy in the heat.  Harlow is more like people really are and everyone loves her for who she is.  That is really nice to see.      

                The mysteries are good and some I solve faster than others. In many ways I am far more interested in the other things going on than the actual mystery. That does not mean I do not enjoy figuring out who the culprit is. I always like doing that. But the stories surrounding the characters are so interesting that the murder sometimes gets pushed to the side in my mind. I do not know how many books are planned for this series, but I hope there are a lot more to come.