We're All Murder Experts Here

How to Solve Your Own Murder by Kristin Perrin

Pages: 358 Genre: mystery

Rating: 3.5 Star

Kindle Notes & Highlights

In 1965, teenage Frances Adams gets a fortune from a psychic that completely rattles her, and it ends in her murder. From then on, she spends her life collecting evidence on the people around her. Now, in the present day, Annie Adams (Frances' great niece) has been summoned by her great aunt. When she arrives, though, the group finds Frances dead. She's been murdered, just like she always thought. Annie has to use Frances' wealth of knowledge to find her murderer before she finds herself in harm's way.

I wasn't the biggest fan of the writing of this book, though I did like it overall. The author is clearly competent and knowledgeable about how to write a mystery, and I did enjoy the concept.

The biggest crime was that, unfortunately, this is another book written by an author that does not trust her readers. I can do my own character analysis. I can understand nuance and subtly. I don't need the author to explain every detail to me. I enjoyed the story in a general sense, but it was a pain to read the author overexplaining every decision to me. This is especially frustrating given that it was a mystery; give me room to extrapolate from the text!

The mystery itself was actually put together quite well. The facts from the past and the present were well-balanced, and most random details were genuinely relevant later on. Most is the key word there — we also got far too many explanations of people's outfits that I could've done without. But, for the most part, I was on board.

You know what I did not enjoy? A man from the 1965 timeline was opening grooming young girls and no one seemed to care about it. And I know that he was roughly 24 and the girls were almost 18, but they were very much still in school and acting like it. He was treating them really, really poorly, and I think I'm meant to find him endearing. He's not. He's a freak. Leave high school kids alone.

There were also a lot of characters in this book. I would've appreciated a family tree, at least, to help me keep track of how everyone is related.

I sound like I'm being harsh, but I did enjoy this book. It's an interesting story, and it's a very unique concept for a story. It's not the greatest mystery I've ever read, but I enjoyed it for what it was.