While this book is out of my genre comfort zone, I found myself fully engaged and delighted while reading it!

I’m not a big fan of murder mysteries, even the cozy ones, but it felt like the style of having the author breaking the third wall elevated the story-telling to a whole new level. I would almost call it a new genre! The author/narrator is witty and hilarious in addressing the reader and imploring them to solve the mystery itself.

The characters were well-enough developed to make me care and the story line was fun, but it really was the broken 4th wall that pulled me all the way through this book. I just loved it and would read more mysteries if they were written just like this!

Highly recommended to readers with playful spirits who maybe liked campy movies like The Glass Onion.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review

Every Time I Go on Vacation, Someone Dies by Catherine Mack tells the story of author Eleanor Dash who goes on a book tour to in Italy and has decided to kill off her main character in her bestselling book. When the man who this character is based on starts starts claiming that someone wants to kill him, Eleanor decides to help figuring out this real life mystery.

Let me just say that I absolutely loved this book, it had comedy and murder, what else can a girl ask for. This book made me laugh several times and I loved the pop culture references it had, as a Swiftie, I loved when one of her songs was mentioned.

I loved the footnotes, I know the author said these were not mandatory to read but they were so much fun to read, so I highly recommend everyone to read them.

Another thing I loved about this book was when Eleanor broke the fourth wall and was asking us if we had figured out who was behind all the murders, I love murder mysteries and found it super fun to have the author break down the suspects and possible motives. Also, I can say I did figure out partially who had done it.

This book to me is 5 solid stars and the first one on the series. I cannot wait to see where this series takes us, I am for sure gonna read the next one that comes out.

Thank you NetGalley and St Martin's Press for providing me with this ARC, the above thoughts are my own.

This was a fun, light mystery with interesting characters and great locations. Not a new favorite, but a solid beach read.

Thank you so much for this ARC!

Any mystery set in Italy is an automatic request for me. I loved the premise and setting of this book, but some things really did not work for me.

First, reading the footnotes on an e-book were just difficult. I had so much trouble that I requested the audio book and also struggled to get through that. Lastly, I got the hard copy. It was much easier reading and I actually skipped through the footnotes throughout most of it unless I was really curious. It was fun idea but for me personally, I was not a fan.

I love books about authors so I did enjoy that portion. I didn't love Eleanor (she was needy and sometimes annoying) but I did enjoy the other aspects of the book - sibling issues, writers, Italy, stalking mystery, ex-issues.

This cozy mystery romance is quite clever. A young author based an adventure mystery novel on a real life vacation exploit and included the partner in her novel. Now ten years later, she is wants to rid her life of the man and plans to kill off his character in her book series. When it seems that someone is trying to kill him for real, things get tricky. Catherine Mack breaks the fourth wall with the fictional author talking to the reader near the end of many chapters. Each chapter has footnotes at the end with some of the character's asides. The concept was very funny. However it becomes a hustle in an eBook because they are at the end of the chapter and you have to scroll back to try and find the point they are referencing. Hopefully in the next book, the publishers will use a fixed page format with the footnotes on the bottom of the page. The writing is clever and the plot is good enough to keep all but the most avid mystery fan guessing until the end. Even though I had guessed the motive, I still had a few surprises. As the protagonist points out writers recycle plots all the time. There are no new plots , just new execution. But The plot twist that the author chose took me by surprise anyway. This book was provided by the publisher, but the opinions are entirely my own. I recommend it to cozy Mystery fans, and plan on reading the next book when it is published.

I appreciated that this was a fun, cozy summer mystery. I didn’t think it was a good fit for me because I felt that the excessive amount of footnotes took me out of the story and didn’t help the plot move along. I think it brought some funny moments, but the footnotes were just a bit too excessive and I really struggled to finish this one. I also didn’t feel that the cover reflected the story, it was a bit misleading.

An interesting book. I loved the cover, it was so enticing and inviting.
I did find the prose rather scattered and inconsistent. I was taken back by numerous footnotes. I've never read a fiction book with footnotes. I found them charming at first but then I found them excessive and interruptive.
Overall, it's an interesting story, but I do think there was way too much going on like the author was juggling way too many plot lines and characters to do equal justice to all of them.

Rating: 4.25⭐️

Summary: Eleanor Dash literally fell into becoming an author ten years ago after a whirlwind, crime-solving-filled trip to Italy. Now, she wants nothing more than to get through her book anniversary tour in Italy and kill off her main character, Connor Smith (in the books, not for real!!), who also happens to be her real-life ex-boyfriend. When it becomes apparent that someone truly is trying to kill Connor, Eleanor is forced into solving the case before bodies start dropping dead.

Sarah's Thoughts: A quirky, cheeky mystery that keeps you on your toes. This book honestly killed me. *wink* It felt like as the story went on every character gained a motive in the case while the opportunities to commit the crime grew. All the moving pieces and tidbits of clues were so fun to follow and try to pick them apart to find the truth. I loved the relationship between Eleanor and her sister, Harper, and how it evolves during the book making it feel so genuine. Do not sleep on this cozy, quirky mystery that takes you on a murderous tour of Italy. Can you figure out the culprit before the end?

Read if you love:
🕵️‍♀️Cozy Mysteries
😂Quirky Banter
✈️Traveling
📚Books about Books
❤️The Finlay Donovan Series

Thank you to Netgalley and Minotaur Books for the #gifted copy of the eArc!

Eleanor Dash has written 10 murder mysteries set in places she has vacationed. Now she decides to end the vacation Series, and kill off the main male character, a detective (and her ex-boyfriend)- Connor Smith. The final book is set in Italy where the first one was set 10 yrs ago. However, this time Eleanor, Connor, her sister/assistant, Harper, several other authors, another ex-boyfriend, and super fans are along on her publisher's promoted tour as they travel through Rome and along the Amalfi Coast. When Connor admits that someone is trying to kill him and Eleanor, she begins to incorporate the "accidents" into her narration and pose potential murderers.
Of course there was a murder and the group was held in their hotel as the police tried to determine the motive, method, and opportunity of the murderer.
We know from the beginning that Eleanor is an unreliable narrator and yet she offers the reader clues to solve the mystery. However, she also offers 237 footnotes which really ruined the story for me as they were mostly descriptive or anecdotal and added nothing to the story because they were so far from the citation. This book had a lot going for it - including a good twist, a plausible motive, and a reasonable ending.

A bestselling mystery author must solve a murder plot that is playing out on her Italian book tour before she’s the next victim.

When Eleanor Dash started writing a mystery series based on the investigations of private detective and conman, Connor Smith, she never knew they would be so successful. She also couldn’t foresee that Connor would turn out to be a total creep that would plague her existence for the next decade. Yet, here she is. While on an Italian book tour for her series, it becomes apparent that someone is trying to kill Connor and Eleanor finds herself on the case to uncover the culprit amidst a group of rabid fans, exes, and literary rivals.

Deeply clever, whimsical, and laugh out loud funny, this was not your average cozy mystery. Mack breaks the fourth wall, has hundreds of hysterical footnotes, and creates a profoundly relatable protagonist in Eleanor Dash. While the plot itself was a bit predictable and the wrongdoer wasn’t difficult to suss out, the work as a whole was a priceless bit of humor that plays on the common neuroses of both a writer and a woman in love. I couldn’t and didn’t want to put it down. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫 (4.5/5)

This is a super fun, tongue-in-cheek mystery novel that takes place in Rome, which I very much enjoyed, having just traveled to Rome last month. The book follows a mystery writer on a book trip to Rome and then people having "accidents" and she has to solve a real-life mystery when someone finally dies. The MC keeps breaking the fourth wall, so to speak, in a fun and snarky way. This is going to be first in a series and I'm looking forward to the story continuing.

I am having such a hard time writing this review! I loved this book? It drove me crazy? It was so funny? But it drove me crazy? I couldn't stop reading it? But it drove me crazy? The writing style of this book contained the use of approximately 1 million (or so it felt) footnotes. Now, the author mentioned early on that you didn't NEED to read the footnotes. But was she kidding? Was it a plot device? Either way, they popped up so frequently it was hard not to read them, and almost all of them were incredibly witty, so I WANTED to read them...but MAN were they distracting! It was so hard to keep with the flow of the story with a footnote popping up every page. That being said...the writing was great, it kept me guessing in the best possible ways, it just needed a few hundred less footnotes :) *This review was collected as part of a netgalley promotion

This book was different. The main character is an author who writes mysteries and gets caught up in a mystery of her own on a trip to Italy when someone tries to kill her. It was funny in places and had a lot of secondary characters. If you like a good mystery then this book is for you.

3.5 Stars

Eleanor Dash is the author of a best-selling mystery series in which her main character travels throughout Italy solving crimes. Eleanor based the character on her real-life ex-boyfriend, conman Connor Smith. Connor is blackmailing Eleanor for a portion of her book revenue, and Eleanor wants to kill him off. Although Eleanor wants to kill off her main character, it looks like someone else wants to murder the real Connor Smith. Eleanor, Connor, and others close to her go on a book tour along with some lucky super fans of the series, but now everyone could be in danger from a killer.

I love the premise of this book and the Italian setting. I also like that in addition to the murder mystery, the book also includes newspaper articles, trip itineraries, and the notes Eleanor makes as she’s brainstorming ideas for her next book. Eleanor is a disorganized, quirky character who breaks the fourth wall to address readers at the end of a few chapters and also in humorous footnotes throughout the story. (Be aware that these notes are hard to follow when reading an ebook version of the book.) All of this adds up to a very unique way of telling a story. Sometimes it works well, and there are some amusing situations. However, it prevents a smooth flow of the story and makes it disjointed and sometimes hard to follow. I also had difficulty connecting with Eleanor, who relies on her sister to manage her life and career. She also can’t seem to stay away from the blackmailing Connor, even though she’s still in love with another ex who is also on the tour.

The heart of the mystery is good, and as the story progresses, it’s clear that many of the characters, including Eleanor herself, are keeping secrets. This sets up several potential suspects and motives. Writing so many mysteries has helped Eleanor become a very capable amateur sleuth, and she deduced the truth behind the crimes way before I did. This book has some entertaining parts, and I enjoyed the ending, but I don’t know if it’s a series I will follow.

~ Christine

Wow what a wonderful book! An unpredictable page turner, witty and entertaining! the characters are complex and filled with lots of twists and turns, murder and mayhem, a must read!

Funny book about an author whose boyfriend thinks someone is out to murder him!

I had not read any of the previous books, so I think I was missing something. I hate to take away a star but this is a 3 star book rounded up to 4 because I'm assuming most people would have read the previous books and would know what I'm missing.

The author has a good knack for adding endnotes that add to the fun. Lighthearted and a good beach-read pick!

Thank you to netGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book. #sponsored

Thank you netgalley for the ARC. This book was full of twists and turns. The setting in Italy was fantastic and the keep guessing on who was truly trying to murder them. While the footnotes did get a little distracting in the kindle version, the story propels you through the writer writing about her own story

Dani's Rating: 4⭐️

Summary: Eleanor Dash literally fell into becoming an author ten years ago after an eventful trip to Italy. Now, she wants nothing more than to get through her book tour in Italy and kill(in the books, not for real!!) off her main character, Connor Smith, in her series. When it becomes apparent that someone actually is trying to kill Connor while on this book tour, Eleanor is pulled into solving the case.

Dani's Thoughts: I don't think I've laughed so much while reading a mystery before. This book was funny and quirky, but certainly kept me on my toes until the very end. I couldn't seem to solve the case as Eleanor is such an unreliable narrator throughout the story. I loved all of the moving parts and how many different directions the ending could have taken, even though it was always only leading one way. The epilogue eluded to a new vacation mystery and I cannot wait to see what Eleanor and gang will get into this time.

I actually was able to listen to the audio of this book and loved how the footnotes were incorporated into the script, instead of all at the end. I can see how having to read those footnotes all at the end would have been cumbersome, so I suggest listening to this one if possible!!

Thank you to Netgalley and Minotaur Books for the #gifted copy of the eArc.

I’m not even sure where to start. Every Time I Go on Vacation Someone Dies could have been an enjoyable book but I found it to be difficult to read for several reasons.

The footnotes. Seriously? In a cozy mystery? Ok, I could see using a few, just for fun and to be a little different, but this book has 237. It seems like a bit much to me. I will admit, I didn’t read every single one but the ones I did read didn’t really contribute to the plot nor were they even very funny. So, I’m not sure why the author decided to use them. They were nearly impossible to keep track of in digital form and I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t like them any better in print.

Meanwhile, the pace is relatively slow, and much of the dialogue isn’t attributed to one of the characters (this can go on for almost a whole page), so it’s up to the reader to figure out who is speaking and sometimes who that person is addressing. On top of that, the discussions seem to meander while the characters are immature, annoying, and unrealistic. I enjoyed “visiting” Italy but I had to slog through the story to do so. NetGalley provided an advance copy.

Catherine Mack has written a fun and sassy mystery with unique features, perhaps especially her entertaining footnotes; they are embedded in the text.

Ms. Mack’s protagonist, Eleanor Dash, is the author of a mystery series. For reasons that readers will soon discover the handsome and dashing Connor Smith features in all of them. What are Eleanor’s feelings about him? Will she get her wish regarding Connor? Find out in this fun read with its insider’s view of publishing.

I received an e galley of this book. I love that the inside covers of the hard copy absolutely meet the feel and rhythm of the story. They are worth a look.

Readers who like mysteries with humor, pick up this debut. Many will hope that this writer will keep on writing.

Many thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s-Minotaur for this title. All opinions are my own.