Published By: HQ
Pages: 336
Released On: 02/01/2025
Arbuthnot ‘Arbie’ Swift arrives at Dashwood House, a glamorously modern hotel in the up-and-coming resort of Galton-next-the-Sea, but all plans for a relaxing stay are scuppered when one of the guests is found dead.
The body is found in the writing room, the victim part of a set visiting the seaside town for an engagement party, which happens to include Arbie’s old friend, Val.
Familiar with Val and Arbie’s previous experience in solving puzzling crimes, the bride asks the pair to investigate. They quickly discover that the victim had no shortage of enemies, and many of the guests are up to no good. But who is simply hiding a secret, and who is hiding murder?
*****
Thanks to NetGalley and HQ for the advanced copy of this title in return for an honest review.
I really enjoyed the previous book in this series – Murder By Candlelight; it had everything I wanted from a cosy crime novel, but it had something else. There was this nostalgic about it, reminding me of the crime novels of Agatha Christie. And so I was really excited to read the sequel.
Sadly this one did not live up to its predecessor in my opinion.
My immediate issue with it was I couldn’t keep up with the characters. There’s a lot of them and quite early one. I only read the first book recently and yet I couldn’t’ remember if they were new characters or old, and I felt a bit lost. I think because a lot of them have quite similar stereotypical “posh” names, they ended up blurring together.
Nothing really happens for the first half of the book. This isn’t always a bad thing necessarily, as it gives the author time to build up characters, build up tension and suspects and whatnot. But it didn’t seem to me that the time had been spent well. It was just…it was just there. Nothing was happening, I didn’t feel the development of characters or particularly tense. I was finding myself wanting to skip further along to see if it got going.
I hadn’t read any of her books prior to Candlelight, and so I had no preconceived ideas, but I absolutely loved that and then she instantly became a writer to watch. But this sequel felt flat. Like she had used everything in the first book and so there was nothing left for this one.
It wasn’t a bad book per se. It’s still an interesting premise with some interesting characters (although the main characters of Arbie and Val are a little all over the shop), and it still has that nostalgic feeling. But it didn’t hold my attention and it won’t be one that stays with me much.
Books By Your Bedside 