ARC Review: How to Solve Your Own Murder by Kristen Perrin

How to Solve Your Own Murder
Author: Kristen Perrin
Series: Castle Knoll Files (Book 1)
Publication: Dutton (March 26, 2024)

Description: For fans of Knives Out and The Thursday Murder Club, an enormously fun mystery about a woman who spends her entire life trying to prevent her foretold murder only to be proven right sixty years later, when she is found dead in her sprawling country estate.... Now it's up to her great-niece to catch the killer.

It’s 1965 and teenage Frances Adams is at an English country fair with her two best friends. But Frances’s night takes a hairpin turn when a fortune-teller makes a bone-chilling prediction: One day, Frances will be murdered. Frances spends a lifetime trying to solve a crime that hasn’t happened yet, compiling dirt on every person who crosses her path in an effort to prevent her own demise. For decades, no one takes Frances seriously, until nearly sixty years later, when Frances is found murdered, like she always said she would be.

In the present day, Annie Adams has been summoned to a meeting at the sprawling country estate of her wealthy and reclusive great-aunt Frances. But by the time Annie arrives in the quaint English village of Castle Knoll, Frances is already dead. Annie is determined to catch the killer, but thanks to Frances’s lifelong habit of digging up secrets and lies, it seems every endearing and eccentric villager might just have a motive for her murder. Can Annie safely unravel the dark mystery at the heart of Castle Knoll, or will dredging up the past throw her into the path of a killer?

As Annie gets closer to the truth, and closer to the danger, she starts to fear she might inherit her aunt’s fate instead of her fortune.

My Thoughts: This mystery takes place in two time periods. It begins with a teenager named Frances Adams going to a fortune-teller with her two best friends in 1965 and receiving a fortune that will haunt her life. The fortune teller says that she will be murdered!

Frances spends the rest of her life trying to discover who is going to kill her until she is finally killed nearly 60 years later. On the way, she creates all sorts of files about the people she connects with which contain many of their secrets. 

In the present day, Annie Adams receives a summons to the small village to learn about what will be coming to her in her great-aunt's will. Annie has never met her great-aunt although she and her artist mother live in her great-aunt's London home and have for most of Annie's life. Annie has recently lost her job as an administrative assistant and wants to become an author of mysteries. She has sent her first book out to agents and publishers. 

When Annie gets to the village, she meets the lawyer and other potential heirs but doesn't meet her aunt. When they go to her aunt's home, they discover her dead in suspicious circumstances. When the will is read a couple of days later, Annie learns that she has a week to discover who murdered her aunt if she wants to inherit all of her millions. She is in competition with her aunt's nephew by marriage and with the police. If the murderer is not discovered in a week the property will be sold to property developers and the monies donated.

Annie does have her great-aunt's journal to help her which is the way we get to know Frances Adams too. I liked that way the story switched from the past to the present and back again. I liked Annie's determination to solve the murder both as a way of getting to know her great-aunt and as a way to save the many villagers who life would be ruined if the property was sold for development.

This was an engaging mystery. I really enjoyed it. 

Favorite Quote:

"Well, if TV has taught us anything, it's that the murder rate in small villages is disproportionately high. So you'd better keep me on standby, because I'm sure there's a locked room in your future."

I received this one in exchange for an honest review from NetGalley. You can buy your copy here.