Teaming up with her two cottage-mates, both ardent mystery lovers—Wyatt Green, forty, who works unhappily in his husband’s birding store, and Amity Clark, fifty, a divorced romance writer struggling with her novels—Cath sets about solving the “crime” and begins to unravel shocking truths about her mother along the way. Amidst a fling—or something more—with the handsome local maker of artisanal gin, Cath and her irresistibly charming fellow sleuths will find this week of fake murder may help them face up to a very real crossroads in their own lives.
Witty, wise, and deliciously escapist, Welcome to Murder Week is a fresh, inventive twist on the murder mystery and a touching portrayal of one daughter’s reckoning with her grief, her past—and her own budding sense of adventure.
Comment: The idea of this book seemed interesting, and that is the main reason why I've added it to the TBR list.
In this story we meet Cath, as she discovers that her mother had booked them a week in the UK, so that they could participate in a "murder week experience" and solve a crime, just like detectives do in cozy mystery novels. the problem is that they never had a good relationship, neither had been fan of mysteries and her mother has recently died. Still, the money is nonrefundable and Cath decides to go, especially since it also seemed her mother had to have another reason to travel there, but what could it be, since the experience is to happen at a small village and not in any cosmopolitan location that her mother would have preferred? Along the way, Cath is going to discover several things, but is she ready for that?
I thought this would be a cute story to follow, for it seemed it would have a murder investigation, a sort of of whodunit (which I tend to enjoy) and some romance hints, and I imagined it would be a wonderful reading experience to mix up things I normally like in books. In a way, it was so, but I'm sad to say there were too many elements to consider, and that distracted me.
The story is told only from Cath's POV and I assume that it was this way so that we could "connect" more with her but also for it to be easier to follow the clues without the effort of too many voices and inputs. I assume, perhaps this was meant to give a smoother presentation of what was happening. However, this was lot on me, considering that besides the plot about the murder week, and the romance, and the friendships with the others, Cath is also investigation her mother's reasons to have booked the whole thing. To me, there were too many things and perhaps the story lost some steam due to too many things.
The murder week element was my favorite. Cath and other participants need to investigate a mystery, and the organization included many inhabitants of the village, as if it was a live in theater, and they could interview the "actors" as if in a real detective investigation. It reminded me of those real life enactments of historical/fictional moments we hear about, but at a minimized level. This was fun and I did appreciate how detailed the scenes were, and the effort the author put into make this seem realistic.
I also liked the many references to books, authors, and literary knowledge which were included, in fact there were so many that I found myself interested in this or that, and was happy to recognize many. What wasn't as well done, but I suppose it couldn't be avoided completely, was the spoilers for two Agatha Christie books, one of which I haven't read yet, for it features miss Marple and I haven't read that series. This aside, all these things somehow liked to the murder week experience and with Cath's development as a character, thus I can still think of everything as something positive.
The romance was, as expected, a little too superficial, considering the need to pay attention to several other details. I liked Dev, the romantic interest, and how he is connected with Cath in a deeper way than what it seems at first. If this were to be a romance novel, or a woman's fiction novel, I bet this element would have been better accomplished. But there it is, I feel it's hard to "label" this book since too many things are happening at the same time.
Cath's relationship with her late mother was never great and now Cath has a chance to learn why and to understand why her mother was the type to not have roots. I think Cath isn't too different from her mother, but learning about her mother and why she wanted to travel to the UK for this experience in this location does help her to get closure on some feelings. Again, this element wasn't a bad one, and it did provide me with interesting food for thought questions, but... along with so many other things, in the end this felt it was explored a little too superficially.
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