Aunt Dimity's Death by Nancy Atherton

The debut that kicked off twenty-two books (and counting...) of the bestselling, beloved Aunt Dimity series. Watch out for Nancy Atherton's latest, Aunt Dimity and the King's Ransom, coming in July 2018 from Viking! Lori Shepherd thought Aunt Dimity was just a character in a bedtime story... ...Until the Dickensian law firm of Willis & Willis summons her to a reading of the woman's will. Down-on-her-luck Lori learns she's about to inherit a siazable estate--if she can discover the secret hidden in a treasure trove of letters in Dimity's English country cottage. What begins as a fairy tale becomes a mystery--and a ghost story--in an improbably cozy setting, as Aunt Dimity's indominable spirit leads Lori on an otherworldly quest to discover how, in this life, true love can conquer all.

I expected a lot more hilarity and absurdity from a premise like this. It started off promisingly enough but then kinda just fell a little flat after a while. Not to mention, the mystery only took off at about the 50-60% mark so it took a long time before there was any kind of hook for me to get into the plot at all.

I really expected more input from Aunt Dimity's ghost since the book and series is named after her, but we kinda just get a lot of Lori and Bill and their rather unlikely romance. I wasn't very won over by either of them, which made getting through the book a little tough. The mystery wasn't even really a mystery - just a matter of finding out what was the one great sadness of Aunt Dimity's life, and for no bigger incentive other than that Lori's late mom left a letter asking her to do so just because.

If the mystery wasn't exciting, the resolution is even more indifferent. It simply turns out that Dimity had always thought she had caused the death of Bobby MacLaren, her lover and would-be betrothed because she broke their engagement a day before he went on an ill-fated flight as a pilot in WW2. She thought her betrayal had distracted him enough to cause his death during that flight, and his distraught and resentful brother, Andrew, had written her to tell her as much. As it later turns out, Andrew finds out that Bobby had never lost faith in Dimity all along and had already fashioned a wedding ring to give to her. Andrew withheld the wedding ring from Dimity out of sheer resentment. After Lori finally finds all this out, somehow everything is resolved and both Dimity and Bobby can now enjoy the afterlife together.

W-elp.

Overall, the book was serviceable with some bright moments in the narrative along the way, but it could've done with quicker pacing or a more exciting mystery that starts earlier. My experience of the book was also dampened by the performance of the narrator Teri Linden, who didn't seem to be enjoying the book either.