Hannah Hendy’s An Unfortunate Christmas Murder is an average Christmas cozy. I enjoyed the likable characters and delightful Christmas setting but the mystery plot moves way too slowly and takes some truly nonsensical turns.

Margery is preparing for her first Christmas as kitchen manager at Summerview School. It’s shaping up to be a busy season but she has the support of her dedicated kitchen team and her kooky wife, Clementine. However, things are about to get even more hectic! The kitchen team (including the wives) is soon forced into performing in the annual Christmas concert by the Head of Drama, Mrs. Smith. The first rehearsal quickly turns deadly when the stage lights collapse and kill the music teacher, Mrs Large. Mrs. Smith becomes the prime suspect and she is desperate for the Dinner Lady Detectives to clear her name.

I was really excited to read this cosy because it seemed so fun and original. How often do you read a book starring mystery-solving married middle-aged lesbians? However, there is a lot of wasted potential because the book turned out to be a very average holiday mystery starring a couple who seem more like gal pals than wives.

The book has several funny moments but the lightness and humour doesn’t carry well throughout the story. There is also a sad lack of that distinctive cozy fun and charm and this results in the story having an unfinished feel. However, I did like the wonderfully warm Christmas atmosphere and the quaint small-town setting.

The mystery had the potential to be fun and interesting but it ultimately falls flat. The plot moves quite slowly and doesn’t make much sense. I also would have liked to see the Dinner Lady Detectives do some more sleuthing. There are a few red herrings sprinkled throughout but none of them really deliver. I wish the suspects were more interesting and more viable. The big reveal is also severely underwhelming as the motives are weak and unconvincing. The entire book is also lacking in thrill and suspense and I never bought that anything really bad would happen next.

The large cast of likable and entertaining characters is this book’s saving grace. Main character Margery is dedicated to her job and her team. However, she is too quiet and unassuming. I really wish she had more personality because she often fades into the background. Her eccentric wife Clementine is quite amusing with her Christmas obsession. However, Clementine and Margery absolutely do not seem like a believable married couple. There is no spark or connection and they act like roommates or sisters. I was really disappointed in this aspect of the book. The other kitchen ladies are funny and I wish they had more depth as they are too one-dimensional and forgettable. However, I really enjoyed over-the-top and demanding Mrs. Rose Smith who provides some much needed ridiculousness and laughter.




🎄🎄 out of 5 Christmas trees!

It was so good to visit with Margery and Clementine again and this time as they get ready for Christmas.

With new members of their kitchen team to cope with alongside some seasonal mischief and more serious incidents, it made for a lovely read.

Following the Dinner Lady Detectives as they try to piece everything together is a joy. All the characters are so well written, it’s easy to have favourites and know people just like them.

I’m hoping there will be more books to this series, I’ve really enjoyed the first two!

I absolutely loved the first book in the series and this one was just as good! Loved the storyline and the characters. Margery and Clementine make good main characters with all there quirks! Looking forward to the third instalment in the series.

As Margery is prepping for her first holiday season as the school’s newest kitchen manager, she quickly finds that things are getting out of hand. Fast. Between being forced into the Christmas concert, Mrs. Large’s mysterious death at the hand of fallen stage lights, and someone sabotaging her kitchen’s baked goods, Margery doesn’t know what to do. Is there really a murder mystery on her hands, and is it connected to her kitchen woes? The more Margery investigates, the more questions she has on her hands.

I picked up this book expecting a holiday cozy mystery, and that’s exactly what I got. We follow Margery as she spends her first year as kitchen manager. Luckily for her, she works with her wife, so she always knows she has at least one person she can trust. While the book is cute and funny at first, the cute wears off fairly quickly and the funny quickly falls on Rose to keep up.

We have a large cast of characters, and I do like some of them, but I found that the majority of the characters are one dimensional. I also found that Margery and her wife, Clementine, didn’t seem like a married couple. In fact, they didn’t seem like a couple at all. They read as sisters who occasionally bicker rather than a couple that occasionally bickers. I don’t know if they read as a couple in the first book, which I have not read, but I can confirm that it’d be more believable if they were sisters. Personally, my favorite character is Rose, and she’s one of the few characters that really stuck out.

The main mystery seemed like it could’ve been a wild and off the wall one, but it fell flat and didn’t make a lot of sense. Without giving spoilers, every time I think about the who and the way, all I can think about is that the motives make absolutely no sense. Maybe one or the other, but both? That’s just confusing. There’s also another small mystery about Ben, the new cook who can’t cook a thing, and I’m left wondering what the point of that was. It was very small and didn’t add anything to the story, especially since he wasn’t a red herring to the investigation. I’m baffled by that part of the story and I think it would've worked if he was either a major suspect or otherwise very important to the main plot.

While the story does have its problems, I do think that there is a lot of potential for the series. Margery and Clementine’s relationship needs to be developed so that they’re believable as a married couple. The core cast of characters are very likable, so I’d love to see them have some good character development, or at least some depth added. The main mystery fell flat, so I think it really just needed some tweaking so it would be better developed along with better motives for the characters, and that’s something that will likely get better as the series continues. All in all, this didn’t work out to be a great read for me, but I do see the potential and look forward to seeing how the series develops. I think there’s a good possibility that this is just a shaky start to a great series.

Margery has been promoted to manager of the school kitchens with her wife, Clementine, remaining as one of her staff. They are looking forward to Christmas festivities at the school at least in terms of the food, rather less so than being inveigled to participate in the concert. The stage falls, a fellow staff member is squashed under it and subsequently dies. The two sleuths are warned off trying to "help" by the police and, naturally, ignore this. They question people, get into various scrapes, find secrets not meant for public consumption and generally muddle around. Clementine is oh so annoying and both ladies hardly act as 50-something mature women; they vary between acting like teenagers and old women and I'm afraid that I just got fed up with them. I'm still not sure about the reason/s behind the murder but, honestly, don't care. I generally like cosy mysteries but, sorry, this was not one for me. Thanks to NetGalley and Canelo for an advance copy in exchange for my honest review.

I want to preface this review by saying that I did not read the first book in the Dinner Lady Detective series, so all of this should be taken with a grain of salt. With that said, I think these books don’t NEED to be read in order, some things might be lost but this really reminded me of Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot’s stories. This is also definitely a similar vibe of cozy, armchair novel.

So, I would consider this book a slice of life story that also has a mystery component to it. Readers should realize that there are other storylines in the story and there is an equal amount of time spent on each of the subplots. It is over halfway through the book before our main characters get their first break in the case. I enjoyed the characters, they reminded me of Richard Osman’s Thursday Murder Club characters in that they’re a little older in the UK and are learning modern technology but mostly rely on traditional detective skills.

I loved the relationships between the characters, everything was realistic and equally heartwarming, funny, and difficult. I also would love to see how Pumpkin feels about Crinkle in the near future.

Hannah Hendy has fast become a new favorite author. She not only knows how to write a great mystery, with just the right balance of clues & red herrings to keep you guessing but her MC’s, Margery and Clementine, are a middle aged British gay couple and simply just delightful. It’s also great to catch up with the hilariously kooky school kitchen crew. This is the second book in the Dinner Lady Detectives series, so be sure to pick up book one, The Dinner Lady Detectives. This is a great series and I can’t wait for the next book.

Christmas is coming, and the dynamic dinner ladies have been press-ganged into the annual school "extravaganza".

Predictably, things aren't going well...

The stage lights come down at the first rehearsal. Unfortunately, there's someone underneath...

With the Head of Drama being lined up by all and sundry as Public Enemy Number One, Mrs Smith wants Margery and Clementine to clear her name.

Throw in long-standing inter-school rivalry, culinary sabotage and a disappearing dog, and this won't be a Christmas anyone forgets in a hurry

Utterly brilliant

This is the second book in the series.
I strongly recommend you read the first book to fully enjoy the characters.
This is a good standard cozy mystery. Interesting characters are the selling point.
I voluntarily reviewed an advance reader copy of this book.

Before starting with my review, I want to thank the publisher for the ARC copy.
An Unfortunate Christmas Murder is a very cosy book that has to be read with a cup of hot chocolate in the hand and a blanket on your legs.
This is the story of Margery and her wife Clementine who live in the small town of Dewstow. They both work in the Summerview school’s kitchen. This year needs to be perfect because it is the first year that Margery is kitchen manager. Everyone is anxious for preparations of Christmas, especially Mrs Smith who wants to organize a wonderful Christmas concert. Everything seems nice when Mrs Large, the music teacher is killed by the collapse of stage lights during the concert practice.
So Margery and Clementine, The Dinner Lady Detectives, try again to solve the murder and capture the assassin.
The plot is interesting, the mystery intrigued me, and the atmosphere of Christmas adds in me a feeling of “What could happen at Christmas?”.
Margery and Clementine are a force of nature, they love solving mysteries and helping people. Besides I liked a lot the fact that Margery adores crocheting things.
The style of the author is warm but at the same time looming. I was never bored during the reading.
This book is perfect for people who love Christmas period with a pinch of mystery.

An Unfortunate Christmas Murder is the second mystery in the Dinner Lady Detectives series by Hannah Henry. In this Christmas mystery, Margery, Summerview school’s kitchen manager, and her wife, Clementine, get wrapped up in a murder investigation when the schools Christmas play turns deadly.

I have not read the first book in this series so I missed out on some of the background information, but keeping that in mind, overall this was a good mystery. I enjoyed the comedy mixed in with the mystery and clues. The characters were a bit flighty, but once I got passed that, they were fun. Parts of the mystery were slow, but overall this was a quick enjoyable Christmas read. I look forward to reading the first in the series and seeing what else is to come. If you are looking for a quick, comedic mystery, I would give this a try.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book!

Lots of suspects make this book that will keep guessing. Good character development. Good story plot. Lots of action that makes the story flow freely. Thanks #netgalley and #Canelocrime for the eARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are mine.

I found An Unfortunate Christmas Murder to be an enjoyable cozy mystery starring Margery and Clementine, the married couple we first met in last years debut novel. Margery is now the kitchen manager of the dinner ladies in a secondary school in South Wales, UK. A school kitchen is a different setting than most mysteries but the author does a nice job including many of the school staff in her novel. The story takes place at Christmas and has a rather drawn out plot involving the school's annual holiday production. The book moved a bit slowly for me and I feel could it could have used tighter editing but it was still a quick, easy read. I look forward to the next book in the series.

The second Dinner Lady Detectives book finds Clementine and Margery investigating again after a death at a Christmas play rehearsal.

I hadn't read the first of these books, which I feel like was detrimental to my experience. Many things were referenced like a reader should know what happened already. I also found the characters a bit flighty for my taste. I liked the clues but then there was not really satisfactory motive at the end.

I received my copy from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

It’s winter in the small town of Dewstow, and Margery is preparing for her first Christmas as Summerview school’s kitchen manager. She’s supported by her wife, Clementine, and is trying to stay focused on the task at hand.
The pair are determined to stay out of the way of the Christmas concert planning that has gripped the rest of the staff. However, they are caught in the crossfire when the stage lights collapse at the first practice, killing Mrs Large, the music teacher.
Mrs Smith, the Head of Drama, is the prime suspect and is desperate for the Dinner Lady Detectives to clear her name. Mrs Smith is convinced that it’s sabotage by her rival, Mrs Blossom, the drama teacher at Ittonvale Secondary, but there’s evidence that points to her own misdeeds. Can Margery and Clementine trust their friend? And when things start to heat up in the kitchen, will they make it out in time?
Totally recommend this was really enjoyable read
Thank You NetGalley and Canelo
I just reviewed An Unfortunate Christmas Murder by Hannah Hendy. #AnUnfortunateChristmasMurder #NetGalley

would like to thank netgalley and the publisher for letting me read this book

the dinner lady detectives are at it again...when an accident happens to one of their ladies, it seems inevitable that they would start looking into the accident....even though they are warned off by the police

i found this one a strange one and a bit slow for my taste...not quite miss marple or jessica fletcher....