The way I’d describe this book is ‘meh’. It wasn’t terrible but it wasn’t amazing either. The first half of the book was really good and it drew me into the mystery but then second half felt rushed as if it the author was just trying to get it done. It left a lot of loose ends and I felt it just jumped to the conclusion with no actual way of explaining how the character really solved the mystery. It was like she took a wild guess and hoped it worked. It was an easy read, great first half but the final half just fell flat with a lot of unanswered questions.

I really enjoyed this dual timeline mystery. It had an old fashioned style to it that made it very readable. Great characters throughout and I especially enjoyed the diary story.

This is a great twist on a detective story, with the prime mover trying to solve her and a friend’s murder before it happens, and roping in the main protagonist (a debutante mystery writer) when she is bumped off before she figures things out.

Has many of the standard features of a traditional detective story and some new ones.

When Frances is a teenager she is told by a psychic that one day she will be murdered and takes this so much to heart, she spends the rest of her life gathering as much information about her friends and neighbours as possible. When Frances is murdered 60 years later it is up to her great niece, an aspiring crime writer, to solve the whodunnit.

This book is a good cozy mystery, perfect for fans of Richard Osman and the Rev. Richard Coles. It has an interesting cast of characters and moves from past to present in an interesting and quick paced way. It's not revolutionary but good mystery is very difficult to write and Kristen Perrin does a bang up job.

This has been written in an Agatha Christie style but with a much more modern twist. It was a case of dining oout who committd te murder, why and when and throughout I kept changing my mind. The story is fairly convoluted with so many characters involved and the flashbacks were very helpful but added more characters and events that needed being considered if you needed to solve the crime.
The comparison between the London life an the village life was very well written and added more to the intrigue.
A good book that i recommend to crime sleuths

Two mysteries for the price of one as Annie investigates both who murdered Frances, who herself had been waiting for this day since the 1960s and also unveils the truth about what happened to Emily back in the 60's.
Very Christie in its plot style with the traditional gathering of suspects, wills to be read and convoluted hoops to jump through for the inheritance Annie has her work cut out to solve the murder.
There are a lot of characters in the book, which was a bit confusing at times, but the main players are focused and it is clear with whom the story lies at each new reveal of information.
A thoroughly enjoyable, gentle crime read!

How To Solve Your Own Murder had you drawn in from the start, the story begins a little bit slow but the pace picks up and has you questioning everything on who done it! an absolute superb book

This book has the puzzling charm of an Agatha Christie whodunnit. There is a gradual drip-feeding of the various little mysteries, which kept me engaged throughout, right up to the big reveal. Everything was then neatly tied up with a happy ending that seemed a fitting conclusion for many of the characters.

How to Solve Your Own Murder weaves good mysteries, delightful settings, and engaging characters into one really enjoyable adventure.

Highly recommend if you like a bit of head scratching while you race to beat the protagonists to solve the puzzle!

I loved this story.

Annie was a brilliant sleuth. She was such a genuinely nice person which was so refreshing to read.

Frances was an interesting character. The flash-back scenes told via her diary added a whole other layer to the mystery Annie is trying to solve in the present day, and there were plenty of clues which in hindsight made Annie's solution make sense.

The pages practically turned themselves.

I liked the premise of this book and the writing style which felt quite Agatha Christie lite with the big house and a village full of secrets. However, I was less convinced by the very convoluted plot which involved so many characters that I kept forgetting who they were. I understand this is the author's adult fiction debut, and will be interested to see what path her future works take .
Thank you to netgalley and Quercus Books for an advance copy of this book

Really enjoyable story around two mysteries - what happened to Francis's friend, Emily, in the 1960s, and who killed Francis in the present day. Thanks to a fortune teller, Francis has always believed she will be murdered so has spent decades collecting information about people who might want her dead. Her great-neice Annie is tasked with solving the mysteries in this traditional mystery set in a country house and a small village where everyone has a secret.
Amusing and well set up, it's an enjoyable read, and for once I didn't guess 'whodunnit'.

How to Solve Your Own Murder by Kristen Perrin was an interesting take on the murder mystery. I found the book slow to start and difficult to become involved in. But as it progressed it was easy to be drawn into. I liked Annie particularly and was soon rooting for her.

Thank you so much for this opportunity !

Loved the book - Gave me Agatha Christie vibes !

Likeable characters great dual time line - not confusing and loves that Frances when she was younger was also investigating a suspicious death .

Really enjoyed .

I am recommending to my book club 💜

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advance copy of this book with no obligation to review.

This is an easy read inasmuch as there is nothing deep about it, nothing to make you think and it has a fairly decent if somewhat convoluted plot.

Annie has a week to work out who killed her Great Aunt and in some way, for the reader, it is quite a long week! The two timelines were quite enjoyable although the 1965 one did not ring quite true to me. i know the 60s were supposed to be permissive but in real life that was only among richer people in London. I don't think teenagers in a small English village would have been quite so busy sleeping with each other as they seemed to be in Castle Knoll. I live in a small place and even in the 80s when i was a teenager, people didnt casually sleep together.

There are so many characters and we see some of them young in the 60s and now older. I got quite mixed up with the various familial relationships and even with the characters. I also feel that Rutherford was too young - only 23 and yet he is a guardian to a pre teenage nephew, had been married, his wife had left him and he seemed to have travelled widely to places like Afghanistan which are fairly off the beaten track today, let alone in the 60s. Also, Frances must have been quite a mesmerising sort of gal with at least 3 people seemingly obsessed with her and another one who loved her all his life. I didnt really see the need for the inevitable romance with the detective, too predictable and chick lit.

I didnt notice any clues to the ending (but maybe they are there) so it came as a not entirely convincing solution. I still don't know what the queen in her hand was in Frances' fortune, surely not the chess piece, and I am also unclear why Joe came in the ambulance instead of Magda. I suppose I could read it again to clarify matters but I don't want to. Too much happens and it's exhausting.

Not a bad read though, certainly a dense mystery and probably will be enjoyed more by a more careful and invested reader.

The title drew me in. Frances and her two friends were strongly drawn characters but in my opinion there were too many other characters which I found confusing at times. I got the ending wrong. It was a quite enjoyable novel.

I enjoyed reading this book. Thank you to the writer, publisher, and NetGalley for allowing me to read it

I thought this book sounded a bit different to my usual reads and I enjoyed it immensely. Starting with a fortune tellers prediction, then set between past and present to build up to an ending I didn't see coming! The characters were believable and I had my suspects amongst them (completely wrong). In doing something for her mother, Annie set off a chain reaction resulting in secrets being exposed. What? Read it and find out

A thoroughly enjoyable take on the cosy mystery genre, with a dual timeline narrative. In the present day, Annie is summoned to her mysterious great aunt Frances' country estate to discuss her inheritance, only to find her dead in mysterious circumstances. There is also a 60's timeline (with a murder of it's own) via a teenage Frances's diary, which is slowly revealed as Annie tries to discover who murders her great aunt. Most of the characters are likeable (if a bit one dimensional) and overall the story works well, ticking along nicely and leaving me guessing until the final few chapters.

We follow two timelines in this book, one set in the 1960s and one set in the present time. In the 60's, we get to meet Francis, who has her fortune told, only to be consumed by its threats for the rest of her life. We also meet her friends Emily and Rose. Francis is also in the present time line, told as a crazy old lady who lives isolated in a big house. She's very elusive and obsessed, and has quite a tragic lifestory.

In the present timeline, we get to meet Annabelle, who is Francis' Great Aunt, as well as Annabelle's mother Laura. I felt a kinship with Annabelle, this dream of writing a novel, always having books and notebooks with her, this creative soul who is just falling short of her dreams. I really liked her, she was a great main character. We don't get to know her mum that much, only that she is a struggling artist hopeful that a new exhibition might bring her back some of her success.

There are a lot of other characters, both in the 60s and in the present. These include Annabelle's friend Jenny, who is really lovely and caring; Detective Crane, a curious fellow who I thought might be hiding something; Oliver, the charismatic mysterious Solicitor's son; Saxon, a big brutish man who is definitely hiding something; and Elva, a rude, high-maintenance lady who felt she was above everyone else and I really disliked her. And then we also have Joe, Magda, Dr Owusu, Walt, John, Beth, and Archie. Some of these characters straddle the two timelines, and some are only in the present.

I felt the characterisation was brilliant. As stated above, there are quite a lot of people in this book, and they're mostly female, and so it can be so easy to make everyone exactly the same, but you can see the differences in each character that work brilliantly against the others. They're women we know and work with and hang out with and love and are related to an identify with.

It's set in Castle Knoll, which after some Googling, I believe is not a real place, but it sounds absolutely delightful (murder aside) and full of Dorset charm.

I had started an online diploma in novel writing when I started reading this, and one of the first things the course said was to make your first chapter an introduction, introduce main players and themes and really hook your reader in, which is exactly what Kristen has done here. The first chapter is set in the past, and the next in the present, so I almost consider it to have two opening chapters to introduce us to all the goings-on, and it really works.

If I'm being completely honest, it took me a while to get to grips with the to-ing and fro-ing between the past and the present, and to remember who was whom and how they all related. It wasn't enough to hinder the story at all, it was still very enjoyable, but for me, I did have to get really into it, but once I did, I could seamlessly go back and forth and instantly be right into the heart of the scene.

There is definitely something Agatha Christie about it. It can be difficult to write a murder mystery without it being linked to Christie, because she perfected so many familiar aspects of the genre. And in doing so, modern no0vels can feel a bit like a substandard copycat. But I think Kristen has found the perfect balance between honouring a legend of the craft, and making her own mark.

There are almost two mysteries going on here. The main present-time mystery, and one from Francis' Past (which I won't spoil). They interlink marvellously, but I wasn't expecting it. I was expecting a straightforward linear whodunnit, but it isn't, and that can always be a bit complicated, but she's managed the balance of the two mysteries well.

My general rule is that I don't read my Kindle in bed, and I only read happy things in bed. I broke both rules with this book, as I just had to keep going with it as it was so addictive.

Like any good whodunnit, it is full of red herrings, twists, turns, and suspects, and whilst I had my suspicions, I still wasn't confident in my guess. The reveal - which I obviously won't reveal - caused an actual audible gasp.

It is wrapped up nicely, but there is room for more, and I do hope this might be the first in a whodunnit series. But whatever line Kristen intends to take with her writing, I am eager to read it.

A great murder mystery read that I finished within a day! It’s a dual timeline read: present day follows Annie who was summoned to Aunt Frances Estate in Castle Knoll, just hours before she’s found dead and following the reading of the will, she starts investigating her death. The other is Frances telling her story from 1960s from the time of the prediction till before she married Ford.
There’s two mysteries to solve - what happened to Emily Sparrow and who killed Frances and whoever can solve her murder wins her estate!

I didn’t once guess the murderer! A great cosy murder mystery read 🔍