Published By: Picador
Pages: 288
Released On: 03/04/2024
Abigail and her brother Benjamin have always been close. To celebrate his birthday, Abigail hires a grand old house and gathers their friends together for a murder mystery party. As the night goes on, they drink too much and play games. Relationships are forged, consolidated or frayed. Someone kisses someone they shouldn’t, someone else’s heart is broken.
In the morning, everyone wakes up – except Benjamin.
Suddenly everything is not quite what it seems. An eminent detective arrives determined to find Benjamin’s killer. The house now has a butler, a gardener and a housekeeper. This is a locked-room mystery, and everyone is a suspect.
As Abigail attempts to fathom her brother’s unexpected death in a world that has been turned upside down, she begins to wonder whether perhaps the true mystery might have been his life . . .
*****
Thanks to NetGalley and Picador for the advanced copy of this title in return for an honest review.
**Contains Minor Spoilers**
I had heard nothing but good things about this book and I was super keen to read it, but I did have some problems with it. But first the positives.
It is a detective novel within a detective novel. Whilst set in 2022, it harks back to the traditional whodunnits of Miss Marple and Poirot and Morse. It’s lke the reader has to decipher the clues as the same time as the characters.
It is such an original way of writing it. The characters themselves mention things like (not an actual quote) “the revelation will come in chapter 20”, or mentions different ways of writing a crime novel. These are little things that tease the reader and breaks the fourth wall. It shouldn’t work, but for the most part, it does.
I thought it was going to be another “normal” murder mystery, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, I love a traditional whodunnit. But this stood out amongst the rest.
However…
I am greatly confused by it. I did enjoy it, but I couldn’t tell you much about it. It’s like several possibilities are being played out at once and I couldn’t figure out why or how. It was almost as if the whole story was set inside a novel that was being written and edited as it went on and we were getting the drafts. The ending really frustrated me, and yet I haven’t seen any other reviews that agree with me so maybe I missed something, but it felt completely unfinished, but at the same time, not in that ambiguous way that a lot of books are. This felt like Louise didn’t know how to finish it and so just didn’t. It wasn’t satisfying in any way and I was even more confused by the end than I was when reading it.
I can’t say I liked any of the characters. We really only focus on the detective, rather than the suspects or the deceased, which meant I didn’t really care about any of them, and I couldn’t get myself to care who was found guilty or who was killed etc. which in a whodunnit is kind of important.
I think overall it’s an enjoyable book. A unique way of writing a whodunnit with some added classic tropes. But it lacked a real structure, and too many bits flipped and flopped, the characters were in one house but then suddenly in another, this person did it but no that person did it but no he did it, she did it. It was fun and creative but confusing and frustrating.
Books By Your Bedside 