Suddenly a Murder
Jun. 6th, 2023 10:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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bookheaven
Suddenly a Murder by Lauren MuñozMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Thanks to Netgalley for the arc for this one. It was more of a 3.5 read for me but I rounded up because it is well written and some of what I didn't like were idiosyncrasies of my own. I do feel it is a strong debut novel. Izzy Morales and her BFF Kassidy are huge fans of 1920 era movies and Kassidy invites her and five of their 'friends' to a remote island off the coast of Maine where one of their favorite murder mystery movies was shot. And we are using the word friend loosely here, more like frenemies.
Izzy attends a very exclusive high school as her mother teaches there and Kassidy and the others are very wealthy. Blaine, Kassidy's less than faithful boyfriend, has multiple people who wish him ill. Marlowe is the young man Izzy has her eye on. We also have the gay best friend, the jock (his sport is rowing) and the brainy girl. All of them come to this party where Kassidy insists on a 1920s theme, no cell phones/computers, all their clothes returned to the main land and everyone will dress in 20s clothing and they're reliving a famous party right down to the cocktail/food menus.
Unsurprisingly one of them is killed. Everyone has a reason to kill the victim. It's a real nod to the locked room Agatha Christie novels, right down to eccentric detectives (doing barely legal investigations) with a touch of Gothic novel tossed (complete with isolating storm).
I liked Izzy and Marlowe very much. The others are rich entitled and annoying but still interesting characters. I read a lot of mysteries so the ending is exactly what I expected it to be. It's not told linearly per se. The perimorteum chapters are all Izzy's pov. The flashbacks are from all the characters slowly revealing their motives for killing. I'm not a huge fan of non linear story telling (that would be the thing I didn't include in my rating as that is a me thing and not a fault of the story). I did enjoy this a lot. Hope to see more from this author.
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