The second of the Elm Creek Quilt novels, the first of which I read last month. In this book, the Elm Creek Quilters have set up a camp in Sylvia Compson's estate, in which different quilters come to stay and learn quilting or work on quilting projects while learning new techniques. All of the Elm Creek Quilters work on their personal lives during this book. For instance, Sarah is shocked when her mother enrolls in the camp and decides to stay for several months and try to mend fences with her daughter, who wants nothing to do with it. Diane copes with the joys of being a mom to two radically different teenage sons, while Bonnie discovers her husband is having an affair with a woman on the internet. Judy receives a letter in the mail from her half-sister, her father's daughter (her father is a Vietnam veteran, her mother a Vietnamese woman, you do the math), while Sylvia is revisited by a blast from her past.

I enjoyed this book a whole lot better than the first one although it was still a bit saccharine. In this book, the women face real problems and go about rectifying them. I still cannot stand Sarah, I think she's the least sympathetic character in the books, and sadly is one of the main characters. In a funny bit of life imitating art, there was a scene in which Sarah's mother suggests that Sarah cut the carrots she's working on differently so that they won't roll around the counter. Just before reading it, Judy was making me some chicken noodle soup and zinging carrots all over the kitchen. I recommended she cut them differently. That kind of tickled my fancy.

So all in all, a good quick read, not one of my favorites for this month, but definitely a good one. Somewhere in the middle.