When Frances was a teenager, she receives a bone-chilling fortune that she’ll be murdered one day. She then spends the rest of her life trying to prevent it. But lo and behold, 60 years later, murder comes for her. Now it’s up to her great-niece Annie to find the killer and earn her inheritance.
I needed an audiobook that both my mother and I would enjoy listening to on our 13 hour drive. This was a murder-mystery, set in England, unabridged came in at 11.5 hours, and had an interesting premise. And I stick by my rationale – the ideas behind the book is fantastic, it is the execution that let me down. I enjoyed it, I really did after I sat with it and gave it some thought, I just wish with every fiber of my book-loving heart that a good editor had been used. A lot of the complaints online are about it being compared to Knives Out but the pacing of a cozy mystery. People who like fast paced and quippy mysteries were let down by the format. I didn’t mind the pacing, I minded three paragraphs in a row saying the same thing in three different ways. And If you can get past that – past the extraneous (to my mind) words and descriptions you might enjoy the story underneath. As we were listening in audiobook format we had no relief nor ability to skip over them.
I also really disliked that the author seemed to ignore, skip over, disregard etc. facts that are either well known or super easy to verify for the sake of the story. Little bits and details that can make a mystery that much more interesting weren’t there or badly included (the amount of special K it would take to overdose, inheritance and succession laws in UK, when and how police get involved in a death, or what the role of coroner is, even how much illegal drugs cost on average). Again, an editor could have helped.
The story is told with two narrators – Young Frances by way of a journal from when she was 17-19 and Annie Adams. The audiobook version used two separate narrators, and they were very well done with a lot of character in their voices.
There are a ton of characters. Each character was given a character quirk rather than much character development. More annoying was actually how the author didn’t have the characters who were described through the journal in their youth line up with the adult versions (And yes, I get that we often grow and change, but often we are given a bit of insight into how they can be so different) youth version of the lawyer character was outgoing and volatile to the point that he got so mad at his girlfriend for cheating he punched her and as an adult is a quiet, rumpled, sad, and still wears a crumpled suit. They just didn’t add up for me. We go back and forth between the timelines so often that in order to keep track you need to have a clear picture in your head and the secondary characters youth and adult versions all felt like distinct people but didn’t match up. And probably worst of all – no one was particularly memorable or likeable and I hate that. A lot of the characters are just complete A-holes and I don’t think the author even realized or meant that.
There is also an aspect I’d love to discuss with other people who read the book- The inheritance itself. Annie is set to inherit everything – big expensive house in London, big country house in the country, 40 million pounds. Annie never met Frances. Annie is the grand-daughter of France’s brother. France married into the wealth etc. she didn’t contribute to it at all from what I can tell – and decides to leave it all to Annie if she solves her murder cutting out anyone else who might have a stake (like France’s sort of step-son whose parents were killed in a car accident and was raised by France’s husband and who would have/should have? inherited the estate when his father died but somehow it went to the brother instead) and then the author decides to do a big character assassination to justify it. With this part I guess I just needed more context or information for why Frances made the choices because it didn’t seem right the author could have spent some time expounding here.
All in all I did like the book. I was able to figure out the who and how and sort of why… but barely before it was revealed. So in that way – bravo. The ending wasn’t bad, by the time we got there I was exhausted from suspecting everyone and all the red herrings. I am interested to see what happens with this book. Apparently a ton of book clubs are covering it including Jimmy Fallon? So I assume there will be a sequel and I’ll probably give it a try.
If you can’t finish it and want to know who did it just send me a message!