Ratings2
Average rating3.8
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.
Series
1 primary bookCastle Knoll Files is a 1-book series first released in 2024 with contributions by Kristen Perrin.
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Netgalley read
Annie is summon to her rich eccentric great aunt Frances to meet for the first time, of course Frances turns up dead before they can meet. And of course great aunt Frances has made her death into a game, solve my murder and get the whole estate.
Fun idea but our main character is isolated and don't feel I really get to know her and she has no quirky sidekick or similar. She does have her friend and mom on the phone at times but very little camaraderie or friendly interactions for her. I never really warmed to her. And you'd think that someone that wants to be a cozy author (our main character) would be smarter than putting herself in mortal danger.
Parts of the book is aunt Frances diary entries from the 1960's, they don't read like they are from the 60's and takes you out of it a little. All in all, it's alright.
I had the audio version and the lovely Alexandra Dowling does a wonderful job reading it.