With thanks to NetGalley, Pan MacMillan and Picador for the ARC.

I can appreciate this book is trying to do something completely different but to me it just felt a little messy.

I found it really hard to follow - one minute the characters are in an AirBnB, the next it’s their private residence with staff. The formatting was confusing, and i just really didn’t engage with the majority of the book.

I did enjoy the first part which was the setup of the murder, however! And i can definitely appreciate that this will be a bit of a polarising book - some will love, some won’t!

I finished this book last night and had a "Ohhhhhh" moment of realisation when I got to the final pages. Maybe I am slow on the uptake!

This is a really interesting approach to a novel and a particularly brave one for a debut novelist, fair play to the author. ( I will resist more puns from here on in).


This is a really unique take on a locked room mystery. The first part of the book is ominous if normal, Abigail has arranged a murder mystery NYE birthday party for her brother Benjamin with a circle of their friends. The game is played, drinks are drunk and in the morning everyone wakes up, except Benjamin. Then the book completely switches, elements of the first part remain but their new characters, a different setting and a detective has been hired by Abigail to find out who killed her brother. This section is a homage to the classic locked room mysteries of old. It is entertaining and if are a fan of this genre, this section will delight you with nods to some of the great writers of classic mysteries. I found it confusing at first as I was ripped from one story and plunged into another but once I got to grips with the change, I was entertained if perplexed at times. Once I was finally in the grip of the story once more , everything again changes in part three , the conclusion of the book.

I am really torn on this one. I applaud the originality but for me as a reader, it did not always work for me. although the pay off was absolutely worth it and I did love the ending. I think reading this book in this arc format didn't do it the justice it deserved and I expect the finished final copy to be a much more accessible read. I will return to this in paperback, it deserves a second read. I am looking forward to how this is received, there is lots to mull over and discuss and would be a super choice for a book club.

I am settling on a entertaining then thought provoking three stars. I may revise this as my thoughts settle.
Absolutely recommend though, I think this book will have some detractors but a lot more fans.

I'm still not sure how I feel about this book. It isn't like anything I've read before though.
Spoiler but It took me quite a while to work out there were more than one story going on at the same time, and what the story splitting was about.
It's an interesting premise, and I do love an old detective drama. It's a sort of locked room mystery/ Cluedo style story which to begin with is quite upbeat (despite the murder bit) but I did get a bit lost. I found two of the versions of events/ stories too similar (I get that is the point) and a bit hard to follow in places and quite a lot of the characters are a bit similar (could have cut the cast down a little). I did however enjoy reading it. And have been thinking about it which is usually a sign it's not a bad book!
Thank you to netgalley for the opportunity.

Thanks to the publishers and Net Galley for an advanced ecopy in exchange for my review. I was a bit confused about the story lines as at first they are renting an air b and b and then its their old family home, but both Abigail and Benjamin both have their own homes too towards the end. We begin by meeting Abigail who has organised a New Years Eve/30th birthday party for her brother. Its a murder mystery night with selected guests when there is a real murder. A detective and his sidekick appear and start to try and work out who is the murderer but seem to have a motive and means for almost everyone. I liked the writing and premise for this book however I don't think I fully understood parts and as to whether I worked out or realised who the actual murderer was in the end....I couldn't tell you. A good idea was there but I'm not sure if the story felt completed and felt a bit jumbled and all over the place. It just didn't leave me satisfied!

I loved the premise of this novel because it reads like a modern take on the classic locked room/ murder mystery plot line. I really enjoyed the interplay between the tropes of what makes a good detective novel and the story itself. I felt like Hegarty put together a really nice ensemble of characters but I did feel like momentum did start to lack about half way through the novel.
The writing was of good quality and the way in which the story played out felt fresh and very tongue-in-cheek as it manipulates the conventions of the cosy murder mystery. Although in the end the quirkiness could not keep the story engaging enough for me and the sheer number of unresolved leads and red herrings became to muddied for me to enjoy the ending. I really love the author's style and cannot wait to see what they write next but this mystery sadly didn't;'t keep me hooked.

#FairPlay #NetGalley
An ok read.
A group of friends gather at an Airbnb on New Year’s Eve. It is Benjamin’s birthday, and his sister Abigail is throwing him a jazz-age Murder Mystery themed party. As the night plays out, champagne is drunk, hors d’oeuvres consumed, and relationships forged, consolidated or frayed. Someone kisses the wrong person; someone else’s heart is broken. In the morning, all of them wake up—except Benjamin. As Abigail attempts to wrap her mind around her brother’s death, an eminent detective arrives determined to find Benjamin's killer. In this mansion, suddenly complete with a butler, gardener and housekeeper, everyone is a suspect, and nothing is quite as it seems. Will the culprit be revealed? And how can Abigail, now alone, piece herself back together in the wake of this loss?
Don't expect much from this one. An ok read.
Thanks to NetGalley and Pan Macmillan Picador for giving me an advance copy.

Read by my daughter as she loves a copy crime just as much as I do. She enjoyed the beginning of the book and the way there were two parallel story line but felt that as the book progressed that the author had problems sustaining the two stories and they became confusing . The ending was confusing and did not satisfy her expectations.

This novel has a great concept at its heart: what if you turned a modern day death into a golden age murder mystery, whilst paralleling that with someone's present day grief.
I liked what Fair Play does with two parallel narratives of unravelling the truth, but I found in execution that it didn't quite work for me because the parts never fully managed to come together into something beyond what they were each doing throughout. The ending is very ambiguous, with a kind of quiet sadness, which was beautiful but didn't quite feel satisfying.

Every year, Abigail arranges a New Year's Eve party with her brother. Always a double celebration as it's Benjamin's birthday on New Year's Day, it is something Abigail always looks forward to. In recent years she has discovered the joy of hosting a murder mystery themed bash and this year is going to be the most elaborate yet, but on New Year's Day a real death spoils the party mood and calls for a real investigation. This is a complex book, plotting as it does, both the real and the imagined death at the party. It took me quite a while to get into it and figure out what was happening, but once I did, I was able to appreciate the nuance and psychological interplays that make up the heart of the book.

I can see that lots of people have really loved this book, and think it's a wonderful observation of grief, and also a clever play on cosy crime. But I also, thankfully, saw one review describing it as a hot mess which was a response that chimed with my own. I finished the book last night and immediately said 'What?!' out loud. I was frustrated, and mystified. What had I just finished, and what did it all mean? This isn't to say that it was all bad - there were aspects I liked, the beginning of the book is good and I was intrigued and wanted to know what had happened. But then it seems to turn into something else entirely, and honestly for me, it didn't work.
If those separate moments of Abigail's grief had been standalone I would have enjoyed them much more, because it is heart-breaking to watch her trying to make sense of what has happened. But intertwined with the slightly bizarre golden age of crime murder mystery felt jarring. And had that detective story been by itself I might have forgiven it - even if the detective seemed like a dolt who was just wildly guessing at every possible suspect.
But the repetition was frustrating, of quite long passages where pretty much all the text is the same until there is some small change. It felt like a literary device, and I had bad flashbacks to trying to read James Joyce's Ulysses. Perhaps that was the point, the interruption of the story, the unsettling nature of the two plot lines twisting against each other. But I didn't like it. I didn't understand where the book was going, or what the point of the new detective was and the change in setting and scene, and so at the end I felt worn out by the stupid detective who had guessed everyone did it, and whilst I understand the humour of that because in a Christie novel there is an element of it could possibly be any one of the characters. But at the same time, it sad strangely, for me, with Abigail's grief. I kept wondering if the whole thing was part of it being a murder mystery game and we would find that the suicide wasn't a suicide and was interwoven in the party game - that would have made a little sense with the title and the cover of the book perhaps? But no. The title doesn't seem to make much sense, and I really don't know why the cover looks like that, which also bothered me!
Anyway, lots of other people really like this book, so give it a try if you're intrigued. But for me, it didn't work.

Thanks to Pan MacMillan and NetGalley for ARC.

Benjamin's birthday coincides with New Year. His sister Abigail always arranges a special party for him and their close circle, and this year the circle has a couple of new additions. As the night wears on and her carefully prepared events are in full swing Abigail realises that things are changing and people are growing, changing, moving in different directions. Next morning dawns for all but Benjamin. As Abigail struggles to make sense of his death, she begins to investigate his life and discovers she knew less about him than she thought, and it's all a mystery.
This is threaded through with a parallel narrative offering different ways of uncovering this mystery in a structured, satisfying, 'Fair Play' Golden Age structure. Whether this satisfies or bamboozles I think will be down to the reader - I found the parallel structures frustrating and confusing for a bit before I gave myself over to it, but in the end it's a meditation on grief, loss, the narratives we tell to make sense of the world, and although all possible solutions are explored, we will never know what was 'true'. Absolutely fascinating structurally in the end, and the epilogue is outstanding and devastating. Can't believe this is a debut, will be looking out for more from this writer.

A Locked Room Murder mystery novel where every conclusion is reached.

This novel is set in two worlds: in the “real” present day world, a brother and sister hire a country house (in Ireland) and arrange a murder mystery holiday for themselves and their friends over the New Year, which is also the brother’s birthday. Then the brother is found dead, apparently by suicide, and the sister and the friends are left to cope with the aftermath. The sister tries to find closure where there is none and it takes her several months to accept that this is the case. (Does “closure” only exist in murder cases, in fact?)

From the morning that the brother’s body is found, however, a self-aware and self-referential murder mystery narrative unfolds, set in the same house and with equivalents to the same characters, but not in any particularly clear historical era and not even all that clearly in Ireland: the house and other nearby locations are in effect the whole world, which is often the case in that sort of story.

To begin with, this comes across as a co-authorship between Agatha Christie and Spike Milligan, but it’s actually cleverer than that and the author manages to sustain it for a whole novel. (Which is not the case with the one, to be found online, where Beatrice Potter writes “Peter Rabbit” in partnership with Sven Hassell.) Note to self: the Amazon AI won’t like that last observation one little bit, but leave it in for NetGalley.

The murder mystery really is the suicide’s sister coping with a situation where she’s never going to get any answers by trying out every possibility in her head, but it also neatly makes the point that ANY of the initial characters could turn out to be “the murderer” based on the available clues.
And that appears to be the way that Agatha Christie’s famous stage play works: the murderer rotates through the cast week by week.

It is very clever and very enjoyable.

This was an ok read. I don't like leaving bad reviews, but my reviews are always honest. I had to skip some pages, because I don't think they were necessary, they made the book long winded. An example is when the protagonist is lying in bed and it takes you through her facial routine, it's just not needed. It's also quite repetitive, which I found annoying. At the beginning, there was a chunk missing. Protagonist was driving, then it went onto a conversation inside the house. It has promised, but unfortunately it's just not for me.

I quite enjoyed this read: I love a good whodunnit, and this sounded like a more modern version, who would have thought to set it in an Airbnb? That was brilliant. I also did enjoy the break of the fourth wall with some characters referring to the audience with inputs such as "you'll find more about it in chapter 22".
However what was extremely confusing and frankly ridiculous and pointless was the sudden change of setting! I literally had to go back and read it again: the murder takes place in the airbnb, with a specific set of characters who have specific jobs, and all of a sudden two pages later we have a new location, new characters and a different background for some characters. This was pointless and unsettling.

I was really excited to read this - I love mystery murders!

It started off well enough and kept me engaged for the first few chapters, but the further I read, the more I lost track of the story. It was confusing switching between the time lines, some facts changed throughout the book which annoyed me, and none of the characters appealed to me. I didn't like the manner in which the "rules" was explored (although this could have been done magnificently!) and I didn't enjoy the banter between the detective and his sidekick.

However, I do think that the author had an intriguing idea and her fledgling talent is evident. She will grow as a writer.

A well written debut that references back to the golden age of mysteries. Everything is however not what it seems like is all what I shall say.

It is well written and told in two parts. Would love to read more by this author. Thank you Pan Macmillan and NetGalley for this e-arc in exchange of my unbiased review.

An interesting book that examines how we deal with grief and how we seek answers to the inexplicable. Sometimes things just happen, and no matter how much we look for patterns or motives, how much we try to impose order according to arbitrary rules, they can’t be found. The crime genre is an obvious candidate for this sort of structure seeking, and Hegarty largely pulls it off. If I sound a little under enthused, it’s because this was literally the second book in a row I read that uses the scaffolding of cosy crime to interrogate something else, and so it wasn’t as fresh for me as it might have been. It’s a good one, though.

A fascinating book that is tough to talk about without spoilers, but - I was in a flood of tears at the end. A must for lovers of mystery and family stories alike.

Not one for me, I found it overly complicated and lacking in pace. Promised so much yet for me it just did not deliver. Thanks anyway netgalley.

What I enjoyed about this book is the author's refreshing attempt at weaving in the Golden Age detective mystery style with the modern grieving of the characters at Benjamin's passing. I interpret the back and forth - confusing it may be - as a psychological form of Abigail grieving. Her feelings are all over the place and in order to cope, she needs people to put the blame on for the tragedy emotionally and it is everyone.

Downside is, I wish everything makes more sense. Part One of the story had something going, before it transformed into Part Two where suddenly the AirBnb is not an AirBnB - it is now where Abigail and Benjamin's residence? There were zero mention of any butler, housemaids, and gardeners - and then they all suddenly exist. Did Abigail secretly transported them there?? Though I tried my best to justify the changes to the Golden Age detective mystery troupe... I felt lost with every inconsistency and they made me question what I was reading.

I also found it hard to fully relate to and enjoy all the characters as they were a little one dimensional that could have benefitted with more depth. I wish they made me feel more.

Finally, having been set as a mystery and thriller novel, my interpretation doesn't really make sense in a way. Was going into this thinking it would be a good mystery solving story with Abigail and friends but I was forced to accept new random characters - yes, even Auguste Bell - and even the writing style changed. If this was book was promoted as a psychological state of Abigail I would have understood it better - but it's not?


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Thanks to the publisher Pan Macmillan and NetGalley for the arc! This review is my own and completely honest.