How To Solve Your Own Murder is Kristen Perrin's debut novel in adult fiction, and it's a jolly entertaining read.
There are two timelines in the story; the present day, which is told from the point of view of Annie Adams, and the summer of 1966, which is told in diary form from the POV of Annie's great aunt Frances.
There are a lot of characters, most of whom are likeable, including the killer. There is also a mystery within the mystery, which should complicate things, but doesn't.
I'm not going to give a synopsis of the book, as that would give too much away. Suffice to say that this is a cosy mystery, a fun and easy read. If you liked The Thursday Murder Club or Knives Out, then this is the book for you.
Many thanks to Kristen Perrin, Quercus Books and Netgalley for the eARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to #NetGalley for letting me read this ARC.

I mean, if I was to be murdered I would LOVE to also be the one to solve it - so the title already had me hooked!

This was a solid story with a bit of a "looked room mystery" vibe to it. There was no actual looked room to it, but with a limited amount of people involved, and with a very short timespan for the plot to play out, it had many of the characteristics of a classic mystery novel.

My favourite things from the book:
- The throw-back to the 60's through diary entries
- The way the story invites you to make up your own theories along the way (even if they turn out to be wrong)

My least favourite things from the book:
- The ending was a little too sappy for my taste, and didn't really fit with the rest of the book
- The main character has a bit of the Nancy Drew syndrome, she is just a little TOO good and at everything and it is a bit unnecessary

All in all this is a solid mystery, with a fun take on the genre, but perhaps not my personal favourite. Would definitely read more by the author though!

I enjoyed the multiple narrative past and present. Very similar vibe to Aghata Christy , everyone is a suspect . I was hooked from the beginning! Thanks for the copy.

This book was so good! I love a good cozy mystery but I can be very picky with them. I do sometimes find that they can be a bit too simply written or the mystery itself can be a bit lacklustre. But neither of those things were the case here.

I thought the writing was really fun, it felt modern and there was enough going on that the mystery itself was complex and interesting. I loved the town of Castle Knoll and getting to know all of the characters, including Frances. I'm just as sad as Annie that we never got to meet or spend time with present-day Frances but her diary entries really added something to the story and helped me to really care about finding out who killed her.

I haven't given this a full 5* because I do think it is a tad too long, there was a lot of set up and it did take until about the 40% mark for the story and mystery to really get into full swing. Also, there are a lot of characters in this book and a lot of them are related to each other in various ways and it was sometimes difficult to keep track of it all. So I think it would have been helpful to have a (spoiler free, of course) list of all of the characters, their jobs and who they're related to at the start of the book to refer back to.

All in all though, I would definitely recommend this to cozy mystery fans. And if Goodreads is correct in indicating that this might be a series, I cannot wait to read the next one!

Thanks to Quercus and NetGalley for the ARC.

The premise, and title in particular of this one really drew me in and I thought this would be something different within the cosy crime genre. The cover also looks great so I was looking forward to getting stuck in. Sadly this didn’t live up to expectations and the title is misleading as it has nothing to do with solving your own murder really as the person murdered doesn’t do that.

Overall it’s ok and that’s the general feeling I’m left with. The writing is decent, the story is ok but In a market and genre that is becoming saturated it does nothing different to stand out from the crowd. I didn’t really connect with the main character Annie, and didn’t really care if she won her inheritance or not as I didn’t really see her as deserving (her mum Laura is and more focus should have been on her character). Im also confused as to why Frances was obsessed with her psychic reading and took it to be instantly true. I get little things fed into it but it’s a big leap to just instantly believe you’re going to be killed. I always also get slightly annoyed when a detective who has access to everything the main character does can’t figure it out or pull together a half decent investigation.

The best part of the book were the diary extracts which were much more interesting than Annie’s story, and I liked the idea of the back story of the group of friends.

Overall not my cup of tea, maybe cosy crime just isn’t for me anymore. As always have a read and see what you think.

I enjoyed this one a lot! Our narrator is a mystery writer who gets involved in a murder case - her mother's aunt was found dead. But Aunt Frances had been preparing for this for sixty years, ever since she received the prophecy. She has information on everyone. Which is great, because Annielacks exactly that.

There are a couple of red herrings in it, which were too clear that they are red herrings, and the delay in the story's information delivery was forced on one or two occasions - if I were to lift a card from a murder board, I would have learnt it by heart in three minutes - not it would come to my mind three days later that it exists. The prediction is very evocative, but kinda clunky when I try to interpret it in any way. However, these are all mistakes that I can ignore, because everything else brought the atmosphere I was looking for. Very fun. engagind, complex story, I couldn't guess the killer but it made sense retrospectively.

Thank you to NetGalley and Quercus Books for providing the ARC!

Billed as Agatha Christie like. A woman’s spends her adult life convinced she is going to be murdered. As a teen she had her fortune told and it was:
“ Your future contains dry bones. Your slow demise begins right when you hold the queen in the palm of your hand, beware the bird for it will betray you, and from that there is no coming back, but daughters are the key to justice find the right one and keep her close , all signs point toward your murder.”

She is eventually murdered and in her will be leaves her estate to the person who can solve her murder.

The book started out very well for me and I was enjoying the switch between Frances (the murdered one) and Annie her great niece. After about 150 pages my enthusiasm waned and by the end of the book I didn’t really care who had murdered Frances. There was a large cast of characters and I wasn’t interested enough to work out exactly who everyone was.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC

SO GOOD! Read the whole book in about 24hrs and stayed up far too late because I just had to keep reading!!!
I loved his the story of the past slowly unfolds and gifts clues for the current day murder investigation!
* slight spoiler*
- I need to know who smashed the laptop though!!!

This was such a great story and I knew I wouldn't be disappointed as I love Kristen Perrin's work, as always I was captivated until the end.

1965, a visit to a fortune teller where 17 year old Frances is foretold her murder. No one else believes it, but Frances does. And when she is murdered her estate is the prize for solving it.

The narrative switches between the present day and Frances’ version of the past recorded in her journal. The great-niece Annie is the present day narrator, an unpublished mystery writer with a very bohemian upbringing and no knowledge of her great Aunt. She learns about her great-aunt from the journal ahead of kept as a teenager around the time of the events. It was an enjoyable read. I did find some of the flowery write initially off putting but soon got drawn into the murder mystery. A book I would thoroughly recommend.

4.5/5 (rounded up to 5/5)

A twisty turns somewhat cozy mystery with an interesting central conceit that the murder victim had been trying to preemptively solve her murder before it took place.

Small village secrets and webs of connection all converge with our outsider heroine piecing it altogether in the face of a ticking clock this is a fast read, with all the clues to solve the mystery in the text with a little bit of an opening for another adventure.

A most enjoyable read at the end of the year.

Actual rating- 3.5 stars. The book is a nice, easy read. It goes between two narratives: Frances’s teenage years in 1960, starting from when she was told her future ‘contained dried bones’ and then Annie, Frances’s niece, trying to solve her murder. I enjoyed reading Frances’s POV, as it was a lot more interesting than Annie’s imo, I only wish Frances’s POV was longer. Overall, it was a good read but not one that I’d jump at the chance to read again for the first time.

Thanks to NetGalley and Quercus books for this ARC.

Rating: 2.3/5

I was initially drawn to this novel by its title. It gave me the sense that the book would be a little quirky and different. This seemed to be borne out by the accompanying synopsis. These elements, combined with the significant noise surrounding this debut from Kristen Perrin, had me looking forward to a highly enjoyable reading experience - but, unfortunately, I found it quite disappointing in a number of respects.

"How to Solve Your Own Murder" seems to be positioned as a cosy murder mystery and although it does contain certain traits pertaining to that genre, I suspect it will not be cosy enough for true devotees. On the flip side, nor is it likely to prove robust enough to satisfy the demands of fans of non-cosy fiction. Essentially, this book falls between two stools and doesn't really excel in either form.

The story actually starts with a reasonable amount of promise and the setting is very much in keeping with some of the great murder mysteries from the so-called "golden age" of crime writing, but it doesn't make the most of its potential. There is plenty to suggest that Kristen Perrin has talent as a writer, but there are also a number of aspects that don't pass muster. I won't list all of them, but here are some of the most striking. The central character, Annie Adams, is nowhere near charismatic enough to carry off the dominant role that she plays in proceedings. She is certainly no Miss Marple, nor even for that matter a Jessica Fletcher - though she does share the common (and far from original trait) of being a murder mystery writer investigating a murder mystery. The other particularly significant persona is that of the now deceased Frances Adams, who is represented by means of her diary entries from the 1960s. Helpfully, Frances' diary entries are printed in italics, which is just as well, as the reader may otherwise struggle to distinguish the voice of her character from that of Annie. There is also quite a sizeable supporting cast, but there is little in the way of depth to the portrayal of any of them. I also had issues with the pace of the novel. There are too many occasions when it too pedestrian far too long and I found myself losing interest. However, there is also one very fundamental flaw with this novel. Frances' paranoid obsession with her "fortune" is the very basis of this whole story - but nothing about the way that Frances' character is portrayed suggests to me that she was the kind of person who would simply accept the words of a fortune teller without challenging it or doubting its veracity. Quite late in the day, the author does attempt to provide justification for Frances' obsession with the clairvoyant's predictions, but I was not at all convinced by this. Consequently, the whole plot is built on very crumbly foundations.

"How to Solve Your Own Murder" is far from being awful, but there are also many books of this genre out there that have more to recommend them.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for supplying an ARC in return for an honest review.

A Hornets Nest..
Frances Adams spent the largest proportion of her life trying to prevent a crime - her very own murder. She knew it was going to happen but why would no one believe her? And then, it did. When her great niece Annie arrives, she is soon thrust into a veritable hornets nest. With a deliciously drawn cast of eclectic and eccentric characters and a rather unique plot with a swiftly moving narrative, this is an entertaining and engaging read bubbling over with wry humour.

A joyful, funny read with bags of action and memorable characters. I really enjoyed this. Not only does the author manage to create a puzzling mystery, but also a protagonist who is highly believe able and someone I was rooting for from the start.

Indeed, how do you solve your own murder?

Well, it starts with getting a bright young woman fight for you. Annabel, or simply Annie, is unpresumptuous and open-minded. She realizes all three friends, Frances, Rose and Emily, had a bit of a confusing time being seventeen.

So with the murder of Frances sixty years later, Annie has got her work cut out for her. Will she find out what happened to her great-aunt and perhaps even understand the dynamics between the family members, friends and acquaintances – both then and now?

Often I make a point of inclusion or diversity when it lacks in a book I read, but in this case I was happily surprised by the different flavors of the human kind being part of the community of this small town. Without this being emphasized as a theme of the book.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for a copy of the book.

I just read How to Solve Your Own Murder by Kristen Perrin and it was so good. All the cosy murder mystery vibes. I don’t often spend time thinking about mystery books when I’m not reading them but I was staying up at night running theories on who could have done it, piecing together the clues.

This is the story of Annie, who is called to her kooky great Aunt Francis’ estate. Francis is obsessed with a fortune she was given as a teenager foretelling her murder. Everyone think she is crazy but when she she is murdered, she turns her will into a game. Whoever can solve her murder wins her estate.

I loved Annie, I loved the small town setting and I loved the mystery. A true escape book, thank you Netgalley. I highly recommend this one.

A fun whodunnit mystery with lots of twists and red herrings! I did think there were a couple of plot holes that didn’t add up but regardless this was a quick and enjoyable read.

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC.

This is an amazingly well written mystery with true Christie vibes.
The dual POV from two different time lines flow effortlessly from one to the other with our two main characters being strong and passionate woman searching for a truth and fighting their way through muderous mysteries.
I truly loved the writing style and the plot was brilliant. It had me hooked continuously because as you thought something was about to become clear you switch time lines.
A rollercoaster I didn’t want to get off. Thank you for your approval, my first read of the year and what a way to start the year. I will be keeping an eye out for this author.

How To Solve Your Own Murder started off pretty well, I loved the idea of a murder mystery which we know is coming. I liked the initial fortune reading and found it really set up the story well that you would notice little instances of the ‘signs’ popping up throughout. However I struggled to really engage in this one, the frequent time jumps seemed to confuse rather than clarify and the large amount of characters made it difficult to follow.

I liked Annie’a character and found her interesting to follow, I would liked more of Frances as an adult, as mainly the flashbacks were around her being quite young.

Overall I gave this one three stars, I enjoyed the first part but the more it went on the more I wanted to skim the book to see the ending.