Please Enjoy Your Stay

[cornerofmadness]

Please Enjoy Your Stay by Tara Goedjen

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Thanks to netgalley for the arc for this one. There were parts of this I really enjoyed and others a bit less so. In 2015 Mia and her famous Aunt Iris and her cousin, Tristan, went to an Austrian 'castle' so Iris could interview the owner Augustin whose mother and stepfather had been murdered there when he was a child. Iris is a true crime author of renown, known for delving into the dark side. Her son dies and Tristan's killer is jailed thanks to Mia's testimony. Now a decade later a true crime podcaster is claiming Augustine is innocent and maybe, just maybe Iris did it.

Determined to keep her cousin's killer in jail, Mia returns to the castle because the new owner, Anya, needs a babysitter for her daughter, Evie (this is the first coincidence among many). She is trying to find more evidence that 13 year old her wouldn't have had to prove she wasn't wrong about her accusations. Somehow or other Anya has hired back everyone Augustin had employed a decade before including the siblings, the obnoxious Sabine and Matteo whom Mia had a crush on.

Parts of Mia's detection and journey are good. The tension between her, Matteo and Janik, Anya's major domo, was good. On the other hand some of Augustin's history would have been better earlier or maybe just make this shorter. This is draggy in the middle (which is, to me, more accurate than slow burn. Burns still move forward, this meandered around going nowhere).

And boy Mia makes terrible choices. Absolutely stupid ones that make no sense (like not locking up something that is potentially evidence or at the very least highly personal and important to her) or, I don't know, go sneaking out at night instead of dragging Evie to places her mother forbade because wouldn't it be easier to search without a young child running around and asking what you're doing?

Some of the ending really was so much of coincidence I struggled to buy it. Also for as draggy as the middle was, that's how fast the ending went. Would I recommend this? With some caveats. It wasn't bad. It needed tightening up and/or maybe for Mia to make a few more, better, choices. Also I don't think this title does the book any favors. Yes it's something said in hotels but it conveys nothing.



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