That’ll Teach Her – Maz Evans

Published By: Headline
Pages: 352
Released On: 27/02/2025

A headmistress is dead. The circumstances are suspicious.
And as every parent knows, being on the school group chat can be murder…

As educators go, Claudia Stitchwell makes Miss Hannigan look like Miss Honey. But when the reviled headteacher drops dead in the school hall, a group of sceptical parents suspect the nut allergy explanation doesn’t add up – they believe someone wanted to teach Miss Stitchwell a lesson.

Only four people could have killed Stitchwell: Hattie, the adored school cook; Kiera, the hard-working teaching assistant; Clive, the loathed school bursar and Ben, the popular deputy head. All of them are liars… but only one is the murderer.

Piecing together evidence from the daily drama and drudgery of the parents’ group chat, local press, police reports, school newsletters, and good, old-fashioned gossip, the determined detective parents are doing their homework to crack the case.

*****

Thanks to NetGalley and Headline for the advanced copy of this title in return for an honest review.

I love Maz’s books – adults and children – and so this was one of my most anticipated reads.

I wasn’t sure how I’d cope with this to begin with. It’s a similar format to Janice Hallet’s books, made up of newsletters, emails, and messages, which I like. But the formatting on my Kindle made it a little difficult to keep on top of.

There are a lot of characters; perhaps a bit too many. They’re not all main characters, but I was still having a little trouble keeping on top of them all. Our main suspects are:

• Ben – he’s the dashing Deputy Headteacher. He’s charming and handsome, but there’s a dark secret hanging around him.
• Clive – the school bursar who is not well liked. I really didn’t like him. He was so full of himself, very misogynistic, and just a horrible character.
• Hattie – she was my guiltiest suspect. She kept trying to cover something up with humour. She was rude and gave the sense she was above everyone else, even if she is well liked by some of the characters.
• Kiera – a much-loved teaching assistant and lunchtime worker. She’s put under a lot of stress at work and at home and I really felt for her.

Overall I found the dialogue to be nice and natural, and sometimes all over the place, but that adds to its natural feeling. Funny conversations are had, there’s a bit of flirting, and no shortage of anger and hatred.

It is a murder mystery at heart, but it has a thrill and a romance. It’s more of a character heavy story for me, rather than any of the aforementioned genres, and so I felt the mystery element got lost a bit.

I didn’t enjoy it as much as I had hoped. It was very good and I found it an interesting way to tell the story, and it does have twists and surprises in it – some I figured out and some I didn’t. But it was just a bit too complicated for me to fully lose myself in. I was brought out of it by the formatting. It’s a fine line. You want to create something unique and interesting, but it also makes it really easy to lose the story amongst the formatting, and I think that was the case for me.

I do love Maz’s work and I wouldn’t say I disliked this, because I didn’t, it just didn’t hit the heights I was expecting. But I will still look forward to her next one.