Daily Archives: April 11, 2016

Good start on a new cozy mystery series

Posted on April 11, 2016 by Iiiireader

The Cracked Spine: A Scottish Bookshop Mystery

By: Paige Shelton

Rating: 4 of 5

crackedspine“The Cracked Spine” is a good read and the debut book in a new cozy mystery series located in Scotland. There are eccentric characters, including our sleuth, who has characters in books talking to her. So far, the voices haven’t led her towards solving crimes but it may be that in the future this will happen.

A young woman, Delaney Nichols, packs up from her mid-west home in the USA and takes a plunge into adventure when she accepts a job at a bookstore in Scotland. Within a short time of her arrival, a murder occurs and most of her new friends fall under suspicion. Delaney decides to try to solve the crime to help her friends and ends up as a bit of a target herself.

The book was a little heavy on character description but that is to be expected in a new series as we are being introduced to each of the characters. They make for an interesting group. Each seems to have their own oddly different back story and that should make for good reads in future additions to the series.

I was provided a temporary digital advance reader copy of this book by the publisher, Minotaur Books, via Netgalley.

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Another Wonderful Grayscale Coloring book from Bennett Klein printed on one side of the page

Posted on April 11, 2016 by Iiiireader

Colour My Sketchbook 2: GrayScale Adult Colouring Book

By: Bennett Klein

Rating: 5 of 5

This is the second volume in what I hope will be a long running series of grayscale coloring books from Bennett Klein. I just began learning to color grayscale over the last four months so my experience is really limited. That being said, I have both of Mr. Kleins’s books and am enjoying them tremendously. I have a few other books and those are all based on photographs while Colour My Sketchbook 2 is based on beautiful hand-drawn artwork. I love the imaginative spin that shows through in each of this designs.

Once again, we go into this artist’s imagination and find women with elaborate hairstyles, animals that dress up rather fine, and animals in lovely collage style format. I think it is a great aid that, at the beginning of the book, we are provided thumbnails with titles and room for color palette info for each design.

I will go into detail about the book below for those who are interested; however, here is an overview of what I found:

25 Hand-drawn sketches in grayscale
Designs are printed on one side of white, thin non-perforated paper typical of CreateSpace
Glue Binding
Easy to open to flat position for coloring
Designs do not merge into the binding
Alcohol and water-based markers bleed through the page
Gel pens leave shadows of color on the back of page
Coloring pencils work great with this paper

I usually use soft lead pencils for grayscale projects. That is what I did with my first project. I put my color on in what I understand is typical for grayscale coloring (light on first, dark second, and medium tones last for blending.) I just finished my first project in the book and have already begun my second one. Just as I did with the first book, I will probably pick up a second one. I just love the idea of working each design in different colorways.

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