When a despised head teacher dies in mysterious circumstances, members of the year six WhatsApp group decide to investigate.

I enjoyed this very much. It was reminiscent of Janice Hallett’s books with its combination of messages, emails, written text and story, with a bit of JM Hall thrown in with the humorous school setting!

It was well written, the mystery kept me engaged and found the ending really satisfying!

I’d highly recommend this to anyone who enjoys a good mystery with a humorous twist.

*** Thanks to NetGalley and the Publisher ***

I love Maz's books - adults and children - and so this was one of my most anticipated reads.

I wasn't sure how I'd cope with this to begin with. It's a similar format to Janice Hallet's books, made up of newsletters, emails, and messages, which I like. But the formatting on my Kindle made it a little difficult to keep on top of.

There are a lot of characters; perhaps a bit too many. They're not all main characters, but I was still having a little trouble keeping on top of them all. Our main suspects are:

Ben - he's the dashing Deputy Headteacher. He's charming and handsome, but there's a dark secret hanging around him.

Clive - the school bursar who is not well liked. I really didn't like him. He was so full of himself, very misogynistic, and just a horrible character.

Hattie - she was my guiltiest suspect. She kept trying to cover something up with humour. She was rude and gave the sense she was above everyone else, even if she is well liked by some of the characters.

Kiera - a much-loved teaching assistant and lunchtime worker. She's put under a lot of stress at work and at home and I really felt for her.

Overall I found the dialogue to be nice and natural, and sometimes all over the place, but that adds to its natural feeling. Funny conversations are had, there's a bit of flirting, and no shortage of anger and hatred.

It is a murder mystery at heart, but it has a thrill and a romance. It's more of a character heavy story for me, rather than any of the aforementioned genres, and so I felt the mystery element got lost a bit.

I didn't enjoy it as much as I had hoped. It was very good and I found it an interesting way to tell the story, and it does have twists and surprises in it - some I figured out and some I didn't. But it was just a bit too complicated for me to fully lose myself in. I was brought out of it by the formatting. It's a fine line. You want to create something unique and interesting, but it also makes it really easy to lose the story amongst the formatting, and I think that was the case for me.

I do love Maz's work and I wouldn't say I disliked this, because I didn't, it just didn't hit the heights I was expecting. But I will still look forward to her next one.

Maz Evan’s adult debut, Over My Dead Body was spiky, funny, wildly inventive and my number 1 book of 2023. Her second, That’ll Teach Her, can’t possibly follow that, can it?

While I thought I wanted a sequel to the first, Evans knows better, taking a sharp turn and changing format. This novel is primarily a modern epistolary format- newspaper articles, police reports and the WhatsApp groups for Tiger Class at St Nonnatus school.

The opening sees one character texting the group from a school event, and the Head is murdered. At first it’s disorienting, as you try to learn all the participants in the chat, but Evans is very clever to intersperse the characters we need to know with the archetypal people - the one posting about lost kit, the humble boasting overachiever, the conservative prudish one.

You quickly realise despite the chaotic format, Evans is in complete control. Information is parsed cleverly and the three parents who decide to solve it are likeable and fleshed out.

Rather than bogged down in the format, at the expense of character, mixed in are POV’s of the four main suspects. Evans shrewdly manages to delve into them without revealing the culprit. As with Miriam in Over My Dead Body none of them are particularly likeable, but they are compelling. The choice of suspects - not detectives - works well, and it’s great to see what they all think of our heroes.

More than all this it’s FUNNY. Properly. Broad jokes, puns, farce situations, all executed with precision. As a parent of primary age children I love how Evans is able to highlight the extreme nonsense involved. My favourite excerpts are the reports from the class soft toy that goes home with a student each week.

This is a triumph. Funny, silly, with a proper mystery to solve and moments of pathos and insight. If the first book was a challenge to Richard Osman, her second book is calling out Janice Hallett for an earrings off, ponytail pulling fight. Don’t count out this plucky younger classmate - she fights dirty!

Out on 27 Feb, review copy #gifted for an honest review.

I really really REALLY wanted to love this and I found the humorous narrative and the school environment perfect pitched BUT…I just couldn’t get on with the format of this book. I loved the idea of the class what’s app chats which were spot on but there were too many characters and too much chopping and changing between them for me to be able to keep up. This is nothing against the author or the fabulous storyline here because I just can’t get on with books written in this way-it’s a personal thing and this isn’t the first book I’ve struggled with due to the setup.
So a fantastic plot told with her trademark humour but not for me sorry.

Loved this! There’s so much school stuff in this that made me laugh! Especially when I’m now on holiday away from work. Maz just gets funny whether it’s for kids or adults. This was a brilliantly written, interestingly presented story and I loved (and hated) the characters!

When the dreaded and seemingly indestructible St Nonnatus headteacher Miss Stitchwell tragically dies at the school, the parent’s chat is abuzz with gossip and speculation. The trio of sleuths which include a former police officer, Priya, stay at home dad Al and PTA chair Tanya suspect the foul play and set on to investigate!

The book is narrated from the points of view of four suspects, including dear departed and the creepiest bursar ever, Clive Baxendale, beloved powerhouse Hattie, the school cook, teacher assistant Kiera who is determined to give her younger daughter a good start in life, and the interim head, Ben, and it is interspersed with parent’s chat transcripts, parent’s letters, police reports and others. My absolute favourite was – obviously – the class chat, a chaotic mish mash of local gossip, random questions about spellings and lost items and hilarious mistakes. It was very relatable and hysterical in places, surprisingly tender in others and it had the feel of a piece written by a person who had to at some point deal with the school environment… I loved the setting and the dialogues are the author’s strong point, the plot was also neatly constructed and delivered. I also thought it was a great idea to include some thoughts about the inclusion and diversity in the book, these were unexpected but very much welcomed. This is the second book by Maz Evans for grownups, after the fantastic Over My Dead Body, and I am pleased to say that her humour just hits the spot with me.

This was typical Maz Evans- astute observational humour that makes you chuckle aloud mixed with serious social comment - and a pretty decent mystery as an added extra. Ok the plot was OTT but as a vehicle for all the maze of other elements it was perfect. The characters were all deftly portrayed, the glimpse of school life spot on and the parents WhatsApp group genius!!! If you have had anything to do with the education system ever there is something or someone you will recognise in the book. And yes the murder mystery was no Agatha Christie but heh, it produced some great villains..
Totally loved this, glad Evans is as great a writer for adults as kids. Roll on the next one please….

Claudia Stitchwell is the head of the local primary school and is universally disliked. She's allergic to nuts - but when she collapses at a school event and her epipen can't be found, she dies.

There are four people with good reason to want her dead - the school cook, the bursar, the assistant head and one of the teaching assistants. But could one of them really have killed her?

And when one of the main suspects is also found dead, the parents start to wonder whether the murderer could be someone else?

The story's told by four unreliable narrators (ie the main suspects), interspersed with police interviews and group chats from the school parents - it's very funny, clever and entertaining. One of the parents is a former detective, and rather better at putting clues together than the local bobby. The murderer was well hidden for most of the way through :)

A genius idea, a fabulous cast, an intricately woven plot and plenty of laugh-out-loud moments, especially in the dreaded parent WhatsApp. We've all been there! Another cracker of a murder mystery from Maz Evans, one of my most favourite writers.

When headmistress Claudia Stitchwell dies suddenly at a school event due to a nut allergy, parents and staff begin to suspect foul play - especially as the school is supposed to be a nut-free zone.What follows is a laugh-out-loud investigation told through chat messages, police reports, school newsletters, and personal accounts.

A cleverly constructed murder mystery, highly recommended!

Thank you to NetGalley and Headline for this ARC.

Claudia Stitchwell, headmistress of a CofE Primary School, collapses in the school hall after her nut allergy kicks in and dies when no EpiPen is found in time. She wasn't well-liked and in particular four people had reason to want her dead - school cook Hattie, teaching assistant Kiera, deputy head Ben and school bursar Clive.

The suspicious parents of "Year 6 Tiger Class" have a lively group chat going that discusses everything from this week's spellings to now rumours that Ms Stitchwell was murdered, considering the school is usually a nutfree zone. We get the typical parents who think their children are the best in everything, the parents whose child loses clothes all the time, or who is never invited to a party and Laura who is always "in the wrong group, sorry". We have the odd vaccine denier and "trans is a life choice" bigot, but we also have great people who help out everywhere and try to make everyone welcome.

The book is written in multi POV between the four suspects (who are all unrelatable narrators) and is interspersed with chaotic chat transcripts, police interviews, receipts from the local supermarket and newspaper articles. I have to admit it took me a while to get used to this writing style, especially as the group chat format was all jumbled up in the Kindle edition.

This book is a hoot! These parents and their gossip and attempts to investigate are hilarious. I also loved "Tickly Tiger's Diary", the class mascot who gets to spend alternate weekends with a child and their parents, and Office Manager Marcia's newsletters to the parents, especially the last one! The addresses go from Parents to Carers to Guardians to Parental Responsibility Providers to Guiding Adults to Self-determining Care Providers to "whatever the bloody hell you want to call yourselves this week", LOL.

The narrative is fast and frenetic anyway but goes up to high-octane speed the further we get in the book, especially when Ben is fighting multiple fires at the same time - the dreaded Ofsted inspection, a school trip that ends in a Norovirus outbreak, his faraway son and his affair with Kiera. This was also around the time I really started to dislike him.

The person I hated the most though was Clive and I have to say it was a brave decision to make him the focus of everyone's hate for the majority of the book, and not the murdered headmistress. He did so many hateful things that his ultimate fate didn't come as much of a surprise and I was rooting for the ever so clever murderer.

The plot is so incredibly entertaining and the characters so well-drawn that I read it in one sitting and was sad when it ended. There are many twists and turns, it is funny as heck with many laugh out loud moments but also dark and knows when to be serious (anyone else having tears in their eyes at little Jacob?). None of the four suspects are flawless, they all have secrets to hide and have not always behaved well, which makes them very relatable.

I loved Over My Dead Body by the same author and I am happy to say she has done it again. This is such a unique, smart book that cleverly incorporates darker elements like religious bigotry, blackmail and abuse of power, and makes us actually be ok with someone possibly getting away with murder. You don't need to be a parent or work in a school but if you do, you will identify so hard with everything. Highly recommended.

As an ex teacher myself, this was ridiculously relatable in so many ways but also so OTT. This kept me hooked from page one and I enjoyed every second.

After a particularly awful headteacher drops dead at a school event, a group of suspicious parents decide to find out what really happened to her.

This was told in a mixed media, very similar to Janice Hallett’s style of books. Text messages are the main part of story telling, mixed in with POV chapters of each of the suspects.

I liked this, it was a fun read and I didn’t see where it was going until about 85% through but towards the end it all became quite obvious where it was going. The main storyline was good and had me hooked for the most part but there were a lot of side plots that I found a bit of a slog to get through if i’m honest.

Bloody loved this. A fresh, original and extremely funny puzzle of a book. Particularly hilarious for those of locked into endless school WhatsApp messages.

That'll Teach Her proves that Over My Dead Body wasn't a one-off and Maz Evans can write equally as hilariously for adults as she does for children. All the characters were brilliantly realised and hilariously/terrifyingly familiar from my time as a teacher and parent at a small village primary school - even those who only got a few lines of WhatsApp messages.

We are thrown into the investigation of the death of Claudia Stitchwell, much-loathed headteacher. Was she the victim of a careless baker who forgot her nut allergy, or is something more sinister going on? With its mix of text messages, letters and first person it is reminiscent of The Appeal but with a hefty dose of Evans' trademark humour. No one is quite what they seem and there are plenty of twists and turns that keep the reader guessing. Evans keeps a large number of threads going throughout the text, weaving them all to a satisfying conclusion. A great read

I am not recommending this one to my students because they do not seem to be the target readers of this one. It is an absolutely hilarious book. I teach online and have a couple of parents group -- one is a group that changes by semester based on enrollment to my courses, the other is a small tight knit group of parents that have known me for years. The former has around 80 parents while the latter has only 16 parents. I have to say that those parent group chats in the book sound extremely real. Maybe it is because I am not officially a school, but a tutor, they do not seem to be the least bit bothered about what I get to read there.

This book is perfect as a gift to the parents. (Yes, I do send a small gift to a parent every semester for being the most helpful parent that semester. And yes, this one will be perfect.)

By the way, a quick review of the book: hilarious, relatable, realistic.

When a loathsome headteacher dies unexpectedly, the whole school community is shocked. Some are also relieved, and only a very few will miss her. As the parents of children in Tiger Class chat online and the school gears up for the rigours of the Christmas term, life goes on but not as anyone had expected.
I absolutely loved this, I flew through it and, having worked in both a junior and senior school, recognised many things! The parents, children, staff, and environment were all drawn brilliantly and totally believable.

I was able to read an advanced copy of this thanks to NetGalley and the publishers, Headline, but the opinions expressed are my own. Highly recommended doesn't disappoint in any way.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the opportunity to read arc of this book in exchange for this review

I absolutely loved this book it’s the first book I have read by the author and I loved the author way of telling stories and will be on the hunt for the rest of authors books to read

I thought I had worked it out who had done it within a few chapters in but boy was I wrong !!!

The headteacher who died could of been miss trunbiab from Matilda twin sister as she was so evil

I loved the school parents what’s up group and trying to work out who killed the headteacher

Would highly recommend this book

Brilliant! What a ride - a hilarious whodunnit!

Written in the style of emails and social media chats between parents, as well as being written from the viewpoint of those non-parents. Personally I love this style of writing - I feel it works so well, and adds to the lighthearted comedy style.

I read this in one sitting - and I’m not that sort of reader at all, that how swept up and easy reading this is. It does get slightly dark - this is a murder mystery after all…and not everyone is perfect are they?

Overall, I absolutely loved this from start to finish - give me more!

My thanks to Netgalley and Headline for the advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

I LOVED Maz evans last book but this took me a while to get into because of the style it was written in.. however it was funny as hell and any parent in a WhatsApp school group will blooming love the hell outta it!