“Secrets? Not really. I don’t have time for secrets.”
“Oh dear. That’s not very wise. That means you have no mystery, and where there’s no mystery, there’s no magic.” (Shoot Me 105)
I was here for the murder mystery, not the sex. I wouldn’t consider myself a “Lesley Crewe #1 Fan” but I do consider her books a fun read overall, and when she replied to me from my Nosy Parker Book Review, she said “I write books for myself”. Which, in that case, that doesn’t mean anyone has to particularly like her writing, and I respect that. I too am a firm believer that writers should write what they like. That being said, is the book actually good? Well it’s an enjoyable read if you’re into this kind of thing, Lesley Crewe is certainly capable of writing a good story. She creates good characters when the story has enough time to properly focus on all of them, her prose is good, and her books are good slice of life novels. I think she’s a good writer.
However, there were a number of things that I didn’t love. Firstly, I thought this book was a young adult novel? It’s not. Believe that. The first part of this novel is actually just people sleeping around with literally anybody, which means I skipped a good portion of the beginning of this book, and some of the middle as well. At first I thought the pacing was good, but then I realized the setup of the story was taking much longer than it should have. If this novel is about 300 pages long, we get introduced to the main plotline at about 100 pages, which is 1/3rd of the entire book. Personally I felt that this was a long time, and I didn’t particularly like any of these characters to read about them for 100 pages before getting introduced to the plot, either.
The characters were alright. In the other Lesley Crewe books I read, the characters were a little bit more fleshed out and had their own personality. I think where this book falls a little bit short is with the characters not having enough time to be fully explored. Many characters within the family, and then even outside of the family, with the characters outside of the family not having a lot of time in the book. It’s a shame because they become more important to the story later on. Their roles fell a little bit flat to me.
Plot wise, how does this novel hold up as a murder mystery? Now, I haven’t read an overwhelming amount of murder mystery novels, but I think most murder mystery novels follow a sort of structure where you have the setup, the murder, the investigation, the misdirect, the plot twist and then the resolution. This novel does all of that, but very strangely. The ending feels almost rushed, the “plot twist” and “misdirect” are… lackluster to me. I don’t think that this book holds up well as a murder mystery. I think this book might have been better off as a slice of life romance novel. I felt that the murder mystery plotline wasn’t thought out well enough.
That being said, this book had some themes worth mentioning. The characters go through a journey of self discovery, and they find that family is important, they try to salvage the state of their family and try to be a less-broken mess. It’s sort of commentary on material things, and how they are less important than family as well. Themes like these were the little things about this book that I did like. I thought Aunt Hildy was a fun character, and the best character in this book. I was happy when this book started with Aunt Hildy’s perspective, and then I was disappointed when it switched.
Overall, I give this book 2 stars because
1) I didn’t like the contents of this book – I thought it was going to be young adult, but I ended up having to skip a lot of the beginning and the middle where everyone is sleeping around
2) This book doesn’t do well as a murder mystery either, so I can’t sit here and pretend like I was invested in the murder mystery, and it took a very long time for the murder to happen
3) I only kept reading because I thought the book would redeem itself later on (it didn’t)
But yeah, I understand that there is a market for this kind of book, but I really didn’t enjoy it. There’s a big generation gap between me and this book, but also just a big age gap between a teenager like me and the adults this book is probably more geared towards.
That’s it for today, and that’s it for this review. :]
