Welcome to another Fiber Arts Fiction Friday! Each week I review a fiction book that features some type of fiber arts, whether it be quilting, knitting, embroidery or any other type! This week we’re featuring another quilting fiction book, A Thread So Thin, by Marie Bostwick. This is the author’s third book in the Cobbled Court Quilts series.
Synopsis (Story Details Below, But No Major Spoilers)
In A Thread So Thin, we return to the small town of New Bern, Connecticut, and to Evelyn Dixon’s quilt shop, Cobbled Court Quilts. After a rocky start, Evelyn has grown the shop into a thriving enterprise. Her only son, Garrett, has helped create an internet shop that is attracting buyers from around the world. Evelyn finally feels comfortable enough leaving her beloved store in the capable hands of her employees (and friends) for a few days so she flies to Wisconsin to visit her mother, Virginia.
When Evelyn arrives at her childhood home, she quickly realizes that not all is as it should be. Although on the surface her mother seems to be doing well, Evelyn soon discovers that Virginia rarely leaves the house and that most of her friends have either died or moved away. When she tries to suggest that Virgina could move to New Bern she’s met with argument and refusal.
Meanwhile, back on the East coast, Garrett’s girlfriend Liza Burgess is in the final semester of college in New York City. Her schedule is full of art classes, studio projects, and research for her favorite professor. She’s already feeling overwhelmed when suddenly Garrett proposes to her and her favorite professor offers her an opportunity to join her after graduation with a job at a museum in Chicago. At first Liza refuses Garrett’s proposal, but accepts it after a few weeks. Meanwhile, she keeps the job offer a secret from everyone.
Liza and Garrett tell their families the good news and their reactions are varied. Evelyn is shocked, and expresses concern about getting married so young. Virginia changes her mind about visiting New Bern and agrees to travel to Connecticut to meet her future granddaughter-in-law. Liza’s Aunt Abigail, her only living relative, throws herself into wedding planning and is insistent that the couple will have the best wedding that money can buy.
As the wedding plans progress, Liza grows more and more stressed. She goes along with whatever her Aunt Abigail suggests, leading to a wedding plan that is over-the-top and completely unlike anything she or Garrett would have planned themselves. Eventually Liza lands herself in the hospital where the doctors make it clear she needs to make some changes to her stress levels if she doesn’t want a return trip to the emergency room. Liza finally pushes back on the wedding planning and tells Garrett the truth about the job offer, and everyone is finally forced to take a step back and think about what’s truly the right thing for Liza and Garrett.
My Review
As always with the books in the Cobbled Court Quilt series, the point of view alternates between different characters; this time between Evelyn and Liza. In A Thread So Thin, I really enjoyed reading the story from Liza’s perspective, and felt awful for her as she felt her life spinning out of control. Liza kept trying to do the “right” thing that would avoid hurting anyone else’s feelings, but forgetting her own feelings in the process.
Liza’s story is a good reminder of how easy it can be to feel overwhelmed, and how sometimes the cure is worse than the illness. With every “yes” she gave to someone else, she gave herself a big “no.” It also highlights the wedding mania that makes some people (like Aunt Abigail) do things that they otherwise wouldn’t do. While Abigail’s offer to plan and pay for the wedding is helpful at first, she grows more and more irrational and obsessed as the planning moves forward.
The author does a great job keeping quilting as a main focus of the book as the Cobbled Court Quilt Circle plans a wedding quilt for Liza, and as Liza struggles to find herself again through her final senior art project. Quilts are highlighted both as a way to celebrate an important life occasion as well as a medium for personal artistic expression.
Final Thoughts
I enjoyed this third chapter in the Cobbled Court Quilt series. I love that each book is set in New Bern, but still tells its own story by focusing on the different lives of the women who are all connected back to Cobbled Court Quilts. Reading each quilting novel in this series feels like a trip to visit good friends, and it’s always fun to learn more about their ups and downs, and how the women come together to support each other through it all.
Want to grab your own copy? Find it here on Amazon.
Disclosure: Some of the links above are affiliate links. This means that, at zero cost to you, I will earn an affiliate commission if you click through the link and finalize a purchase.
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