The Royale Premiere hotel on the eve of a prestigious awards ceremony, all the glitz and glamour of fifties Hollywood and a murder. YOU, yes YOU, are first on the scene and have to investigate.

I'm old enough to remember Choose Your Own Adventure books when they were first published, so when I read the blurb for Murder in Tinseltown thought it was something I'd enjoy. Unfortunately, while it's an interesting idea it's poorly executed

On my first read through I noticed several inconsistencies: I followed a key witness to the airport and watched him die only to return to the hotel and bump into him alive and well; I discovered the murder weapon only to witness crime scene techs discover it again; and witnessed an explosion in a guest's room only to hide out in the same room with no mention made of the hole in the wall or water damage than had been caused earlier.

This being a choose your own style book I figured there would be false trails and dead ends, but there would be one true path through the story that, were you to find it, would iron out all the annoying inconsistencies. To that end I spent several hours reading and re-reading, trying one path after another and still encountering them, but maybe I was just unlucky. Maybe I'll give it another read at some point, but right now it's more of an annoying read than an enjoyable one.

Thanks anyway to NetGalley, HarperNorth and the author for an advance copy.

I really enjoyed the idea of yourself being a detective and investigating a murder of a 1950's top actress, and having to choose my own actions ; but turns out it was the only thing that I liked here.

The story was on itself as simple as it could possibly can be. Example: the first time I've read the book, I must have taken the quickest actions as I've never went over the 55% mark on my book and finished the story. Going back to beginning and selecting other actions, I've been taken to other characters but they really felt like they were here for a quota of pages and "suspects" (they aren't really). The murderer is by the way quickly apprehended and the end bye this is the end of the book just try other actions to see more! But they'll still get you back to the same murderer and ending! There's also not much of investigation you can do, as it's always dead ends or plainly given.

There's a LOT of chapters were you -stupidly- die. A lot of chapters being totally incoherent in a way the detective (us, reader) acts : one moment he's all wanting to do everything by the book and follow the law, and the other moment he do very reckless and improbable acts a clean cop shouldn't do at all (trying to get away from other corps with a car chase? Using a person as a human shield??). There's also incoherence in the chapters itself, like when you select an action you're getting into von Hiltz's room, then getting back to the lobby doing stuff and... asking for von Hiltz's room number? Which by the way exploded and it's not talked at all anywhere else than that first chapter action I got, and it even once went as a hidding base when everything should by under ashes and water!

So overall : the idea was good, but the execution was badly done and not complex enough to get invested in the story. You either have a choice by dying, or going over lenghty useless informations, or following the direction the author wanted you to take.

I was VERY excited to get stuck into this. As a big fan of the Choose Your Own Adventure books back in the day, this was a blast from the past for me. The format lends itself very well to the Kindle format as you don't have to turn to page X for the next installment of the story, you can just click and you are whisked to the next chapter. Loved that. The premise was also great. The stars are gathered in Hollywood for the "Goldies" and then Blanche Aikerman, a 27 year old starlet tipped to win at the Goldies, is found dead in her hotel penthouse suite. Where this fell short is at the choose your own adventure point. I chose an apparently super speedy version as the entire story ended 15 minutes into my lunch break! There is, luckily, chances to start over when you finish, because otherwise I would have felt a bit short changed on this. I was expecting, for an adult book, for the story to last longer. Having said this, this book would make a great Christmas stocking filler, and I will try again and see what other paths I can take!

As someone who grew up on Give Yourself Goosebumps, I was immediately drawn to the premise of this. This book was so nostalgic with its use of "you" and the choose your own adventure style narrative. A joy to read