e-Audio, 10:58:06
Narrated by: Mehr Dudeja, Sophie Amoss, & Holly Linneman
Release Date: May 3, 2022
Published by: Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
Read from: May 6-9, 2022
Stand-alone
Source: Netgalley (I received a copy of this book from Netgalley and the Publisher in exchange for a just and honest review. This did nothing to influence my review.)
TW: Death, Talk of Racist Agatha Christie (As evident by the title)
For Readers Interested In: Mysteries, Suspense, Amateur Sleuths trope, Realistic Fiction, Contemporary, YALast summer, Alice Ogilve’s basketball-star boyfriend Steve dumped her. Then she disappeared for five days. Where she went and what happened to her is the biggest mystery in Castle Cove, because she’s not talking. Or it was, at least. But now, another one of Steve’s girlfriends has vanished: Brooke Donovan, Alice’s ex–best friend. And it doesn’t look like Brooke will be coming back. . .
Enter Iris Adams, Alice’s tutor. Iris has her own reasons for wanting to disappear, though unlike Alice, she doesn’t have the money or the means. That could be changed by the hefty reward Brooke’s grandmother is offering to anyone who can share information about her granddaughter’s whereabouts. The police are convinced Steve is the culprit, but Alice isn’t so sure, and with Iris on her side, she just might be able to prove her theory.
In order to get the reward and prove Steve’s innocence, they need to figure out who killed Brooke Donovan. And luckily Alice has exactly what they need—the complete works of Agatha Christie. If there’s anyone that can teach the girls how to solve a mystery it’s the master herself. But the town of Castle Cove holds many secrets, and Alice and Iris have no idea how much danger they’re about to walk into.
*MY THOUGHTS*
When I heard about this book I was super excited for it. I am ALWAYS for a YA amateur sleuths mystery! And this one had a teen who had a love of reading?! YES! I was here for it. And this was from two authors that I’ve heard nothing but great things about. I just KNEW this was a Nikki book. Unfortunately some news I got while I was reading took some of the enjoyment away.
I’m just gonna start with the elephant in the room. I know you’re wondering about the news that I found out. Well, the two girls in this book base themselves off some of the characters by Agatha Christie. And as a book reader, this is partly what made me want to read this. I LOVE books about bookish characters. But as I was looking through social media at some books by Christie, (since I haven’t actually read any myself) I found that she’s not as great as she’s made out to be. In fact, she was racist. Now I know that this had nothing to do with Liz Lawson and Kathleen Glasgow. They might not have known either. But I after finding this out, it kinda took some of the enjoyment I had of this away. I hated the way it felt like they were glorifying her. And yes I know, she’s still being glorified by the whole world, but that’s exactly why we don’t need more? Maybe that’s just me, but after I found out that info it just kind of felt yucky.
18 As for everything else, if I ignored that, it was a pretty decent story. I thought the mystery was well thought out and well written for it to be written by two people. Sometimes that can make things feel disjointed or have some red herrings released early on, but this wasn’t the case. They seemed to have a healthy balance that never took me out of the story.
The mystery itself was good. I didn’t guess the killer, but I also don’t remember trying to after getting the info. If nothing else, that’s what took me out of the story. If that makes sense. But I think if that certain thing doesn’t bother you, it will keep you entertained and will definitely keep you guessing. One thing that annoyed me though, was the info dump at the end when they were finally doing the tell all. It made the ending feel SO RUSHED. Like this whole book was leading up to this and it’s over already?
The characters were cool, but Alice was snobby lol I remember wishing her chapters were over. I felt like she was mean girling Iris. But I needn’t have worried. Iris held her own against Alice and made sure that she got what she wanted to. I loved that they were headstrong and nosey too. Those are both qualities that make for good amateur sleuths. Definitely worked in their advantage too since they really had no business even being concerned about what happened in this case. (Well after the real police involvement lol)
The narration of this was a full cast, and y’all know how I am about my audios with a full cast! They are always bussing! Idk, it just hits different. Don’t get me wrong, I also like when it’s one narrator that can do all different voices, but if it’s within your budget, why not use multiple people? With this audio, I hadn’t listened to hardly any books from any of them (only from Sophie), so I was excited to learn more about them and potentially listen to more. They did a great job with their parts, the inflections, all of it.
This would have been a lot better for me if I hadn’t heard the things I did. I ended up listening to it all the way through so that I could form a real opinion on this one. And even though it felt icky at times, I still enjoyed it.
Overall, I gave this
