I had so much fun reading this book. I love that we are reading it from the perspective of the main character. The first-person narrative and footnotes make this book even more entertaining. The relationships between all of the characters are well thought out and lead to a convincing storyline. Although advertised as a debut by Catherine Mack, that is a pseudonym for the bestselling author and not a stranger to the publishing world, Catherine McKenzie. I have read and liked many of Catherine McKenzie's books so this is no surprise. I can't wait to read more in the series.

If you hate footnotes do not read this book. I'm used to reading them from academic papers so it didn't bother me too much. There are almost 300 so it can get annoying but part of the book's charm. This book really breaks the fourth wall and encourages the reader to interact with the plot.

Overall it is a murder mystery and had to have a few twists and red herrings in the book to keep you guessing as to whodunit, I was surprised by who it was! Casual, fast paced and kept my attention. The MC was a character you might love to hate with her ineptitude in life and being able to pick up any sort of nuance but is flighty and needs to be wrangled back down to earth by her sister or someone else.

Overall, good beach read and I would recommend.

Thank you to NetGalley and Minotaur for the eARC!

Loved this book! The Taylor Swift references were perfect and the murder mystery and Italian settings were the reasons why I picked it up! Definitely recommending it to my audience!

Any time a novel has a bunch of footnotes, that novel then has an uphill battle to make me enjoy it. It's just a personal quirk I have, made worse in an ARC where the formatting does not really allow the reader to see the footnotes until the entire chapter is read. This comedic murder mystery was good enough that I will probably pick up the second installment, but the footnotes, when read all in a row at the end of each chapter, were a little too forced, in a "look how funny and clever and droll I am" way. Overall, I found the lead in this book - mystery author Eleanor Dash - a little off-putting and self-absorbed. I enjoyed the Italian setting and the mystery element - who could be trying to kill Eleanor and her real-life "hero," the annoying Connor - was clever and engaging. Hopefully Eleanor becomes a little more self-aware (and not in a navel-gazing way) in book two. Thank you to NetGalley, St. Martin's Press, and Minotaur Books for a digital review copy.

This was such a fun read. I loved how the narrator spoke directly to the reader. The characters were all a little bonkers, the excessive footnotes became kind of endearing, and the twist was a little surprise.

I really enjoyed this one, a light hearted little murder mystery!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC. Every Time I Go On Vacation Someone Dies is out at the end of April 2024!

*I received an advanced copy of this book for review.

I'm currently unable to read this because the formatting is messed up in my digital copy. I've never had a book look so...odd? before? Like...there are no paragraphs, it's just a block of text. I think it must just be mine, since other people don't seem to have this problem, or are unbothered by it.

I'm giving this 4 stars based on what I think it would've received based on story. I'll probably check it out from the library once it comes out. I sent it more than once and it just...didn't work.

Thank you to NetGalley and Minotaur for the eARC!

The writing in this book absolutely slapped! I love the meta/break the fourth wall trope in books, it just adds so much to a mystery.

The mystery, the humor, the story, the setting, this was excellent! I’m beyond excited for the next book in the series and I’m ecstatic that the film rights have been acquired! I originally decided to check this out because of the blurb from Elle Cosimano and she didn’t steer me wrong! This is perfect for Finlay Donovan fans and fans of Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone!

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the advance reader's copy of the book. This book was just ok for me. The actual who did it was smart, but I found the footnotes to be distracting and it took me out of the story. The deliberate fourth wall break after act two also really took me out of the story. But this is just my opinion and others may enjoy the heck out of this book. The title made it sound fun but I didn't have as much fun with it as I thought I would. I'm giving this 3 stars because it was a good effort, just not for me.

Mack brings us a fresh and cleverly written whodunit. While a light read, it’s cleverly written about Eleanor, a writer on a book tour in Italy with a pretty eccentric cast of characters. With laugh out loud moments, there’s also murder afoot…someone on the tour wants her dead! Who could that possibly be and will Eleanor be able to solve the case before she becomes a victim? Mack doesn’t leave us hanging and expertly sets up her next book in the series before the last page is turned, one I’m eagerly looking forward to! As a dual read/listen, I’d definitely recommend the audio, the musings in between by Eleanor could get tedious reading, but while listening they were quite entertaining. Thank you to Minotaur Books, MacMillan Audio and NetGalley for an ARC and ALC of this book.

First things first, this story was SO FUN and fast paced and kept my attention from the start. That being said, I was reading the eARC and found it extremely difficult to navigate with all the footnotes. I say this because I don’t always read in the same font so my pages don’t always line up. Not only that, but it was constant back and forth trying to read the footnotes along with the story. However, I know this wouldn’t be as difficult with a physical book and I know, having listening to the ALC, the audiobook was also easier to follow along.

The characters are easy to love and almost hate. You’ll stay guessing until the very end and be shocked when you get to the twist. The cliffhanger though.. I can’t wait for book two!

Thanks so much Netgalley and St. Martin’s Press for the eARC.

I will start by saying that the author did a great job of keeping readers guessing, which helped me stay very invested in the story and kept the pacing nice and fast. I did not guess the ending at all until she explained it to us, which is always a very strong positive in my opinion; if I’m reading a mystery, I’d always love the answer to come to me or be exposed to me in an Agatha-Christie-style, never-saw-it-coming way! I would say that I also did get the impression that there was character growth, and the main character did get SOME self-reflection and personal growth by the end of the story.

I think some of the areas I didn’t quite love are definitely reader-dependent; I think others may appreciate the story for the things that weren’t my favorite. I also feel the NEED to disclose that I read this work as an ARC, because many, and I may go so far as to say MOST, of the components/plot or character elements that I saw as detractors from the story were in the footnotes, which the author specifically mentioned may be removed before the publication date.

Firstly, I think that the main character’s flaws are a big focus of the plot. For example, she is a self-proclaimed (stated verbatim multiple times) unreliable narrator. I think this alone isn’t necessarily always a negative, but I think in this story it just happened to rub me the wrong way in the setting of the fourth wall breaks where she speaks directly to the reader, giving me a kind of taunting “I know something you don’t know because I lived it already and am telling you this story, but you should keep guessing” impression. Her other character flaws include severe sense of personal insecurity, imposter syndrome, and routine self-sabotage, which created some other facepalm moments and made the character seem pretty unlikeable at times. I think at times the persistent negative attributes overshadowed the character’s very significant positives, like how she takes care of her sister and is a humble person. There are specific things in the story that make me believe that the character is actually a VERY good person, so it upsets me that her negatives changed my impression of her that much.

Lastly, I was INTENSELY displeased with the Agatha Christie/Roger Ackroyd spoiler in the footnotes. Aside from the spoiler being completely unnecessary, there was not enough warning, it added nothing to the plot, and it spoiled a HUGE plot twist for an author that I absolutely love.

Thanks for the arc.
This was a fun read. Think I missed several of the clues, even though the main character reviewed them for us several times. The mystery was interesting as were the characters. Probably because it was an arc, the formatting was off. The author warned of that at the beginning. I might try this one again as a hard copy.

3 stars

Overall, this was a unique, cozy mystery. I liked it but didn’t love it.

At first, I was not enjoying this. At all. I was not invested in any of the characters and initially found the footnotes annoying. I started it weeks ago and just kept putting off picking it back up. It was also hard to get past the formatting issues I had with the digital copy. I debated DNFing.

BUT—I pushed through and ultimately ended up liking this cozy mystery. The writing style was certainly fresh and unique. The narrator broke the fourth wall frequently, which I found entertaining at times. However, the mystery was not all that mysterious because it was glaringly obvious who the murderer was the entire time (in my opinion, at least). And not a single character was likable in the slightest. Okay, maybe other than Oliver. Everyone else kind of sucked.

The footnotes grew on me. They were humorous, but there were way too many of them (almost 300, actually). And the formatting of them was simply not ideal for Kindle. Reading them either required me to skip ahead to read them or I had to go back and find the point in the story they were referencing—breaking the flow of the story either way. I think they would be much more enjoyable when reading a physical book, unless the final digital version has improved formatting.

Thank you to NetGalley and Minotaur Books for this eARC in exchange for an honest review!

If you like Benjamin Stevenson's Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone, you will love Every Time I Go on Vacation, Someone Dies. Catherin Mack gives us insight into the world of publishing in her protagonist El. On a 10th Anniversary, we meet El and her "Universe" of people, from ex lovers, family, scorned women, and even a few strangers. As the book tour we realize everyone has a motive for murder. Who is the victim and who is the killer is for you to decide... I can't wait to read the next book Catherine Mack has in store for this series.

Super fun and unique in its storytelling! A breezy read and perfect for the beach. My only feedback is the annotations were fun and funny but often distracting ad I’m darting my eyes back and forth BUT I’d categorize that as a ME problem

First off, this was a cute and funny murder mystery/romance. I was completely entertained and would read more books in this series.

The book relies on a couple of devices that I thought were unnecessary - endless footnotes and “breaking the fourth wall”. For example, I like to recognize a clue myself, I don’t need it told to me in a footnote. Considering I was reading an e-book and listening to an audiobook, the endless footnotes are clunky in those formats. Some readers might find the constant breaking of the fourth wall and endless footnotes refreshing and engaging, for me, it became more of a distraction than a delight.

3.5

Queue this up for the perfect vacation read!

This was such a fun book to listen to and to follow along with in my e-book. I thoroughly enjoyed the story, the characters, the setting (Italy), and the writing style. The footnotes were a hoot!

Bestselling novelist Eleanor Dash and her personal assistant and sister, Harper, are off on a book tour with other authors and the winning contestants from the BookFace Ladies fan event. Eleanor is in a bit of a funk as she wants her long running series, the Vacation Mysteries, to come to an end by killing off the main character in the books, based on her actual ex-boyfriend and pain in her life, Connor Smith. Surprisingly, someone else seems to want to kill him too, but for real. After several attempts are made to end Connor, Eleanor realizes that the murderer must be part of their tour group.

As the tour moves from place to place with the situation growing more dire, someone in their entourage dies. Each is a suspect and the theories grow more wild as the finger pointing, motives, and investigation deepens.

This was hilarious and I cannot wait until the next in what must be a new series comes out. The audiobook was done very well and the narrator did a great job voicing all the characters with accents and pronunciations in Italian. I like to follow along in the book as well and the only jarring note is that in the e-book all the footnotes appear at the end of the chapter, so I had to pause to read those even though they were voiced at the appropriate point. Lots of clues in those!

I have to recommend this debut to anyone looking for a light-hearted read that is nearly impossible to put down.

Thank you to NetGalley and Minotaur Books for the e-book and the audiobook to read and review.

Book: Every Time I Go on Vacation, Someone Dies
Author: Catherine Mack
Format: Digital
Genre: Cozy Mystery, Comedy
Places Featured: Italy
Review Score: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Review: This is a funny book; I appreciated that it was "different" and "quirky". The formatting was a bit challenging (especially with so many footnotes and recognizing when there was a break in the fourth wall), but I, of course, recognize that may have been because of the advanced copy. The story is about Eleanor Dash, an author known for her series of mysteries set around Italy who is currently traveling throughout Italy with fans, fellow authors, and others with ties to the series. As the group tours through Italy, Eleanor has a lot to deal with: some old loves, the future of her series, some crazy fans, her past, and a possible killer among their group... It's a fun book and definitely a nice escape from real life. :)

This well-written, fast-paced, and enticingly intriguing whodunit had me immersed in all aspects in the telling of this drama, from the eclectic cast of characters to the snarky and engaging dialogue to the foretelling of what’s to come and to the backdrop of Italy. The comfortable tone + the footnotes made it easy to follow along with what the author intended.

The mystery was nicely executed with a slew of potential suspects with an abundance of nefarious motives including blackmail and revenge, lots of clues and staging that created a world that I could not escape. There were a few twists and turns that gave me pause as I had to re-think who I thought was behind all the mischief and mayhem. With so much going on, it was no wonder I was engrossed in every detail, which included the part where she, the narrative, is talking to me, the reader, which is brilliant and added to the appeal of this delightfully entertaining and amusing tale.

This was a fun read with an extra cute twist of footnotes added in. The main character is an author on a book tour who desperately wants to kill her main character in her book off. It was such an intriguing thriller.