An amusing whodunit to cozy up with on vacation.

Read if you like:
Murder Mysteries
Unreliable Narrarators
Unlikeable but Tolerable Characters
Pop Culture References (like a lot)
Messy Family Dynamics
Work Place Drama
Books About Books

This was a fun palate cleanser for me. Not a ground breaking mystery but entertaining. For me, there were enough bread crumbs, via our unreliable narrarator, to determine a third of the ending. I would agree with other reviews that the footnotes were annoying and didnt work great within the advanced ebook, though that may have been adjusted for the published work. I didnt love, or even particularly like, any of the characters but I still enjoyed it overall and was invested in knowing who wanted who dead and who decided to be all murdery.


Thanks to NetGalley & St. Martin's Press | Minotaur Books for the eARC!

Every Time I Go on Vacation Someone Dies” by Catherine Mack is a hilarious, cleverly plotted cozy murder mystery filled with a dozen unique and memorable characters! I am giving this book 5 stars and recommending for anyone, especially lovers of cozy mysteries or Agatha Christie novels who also enjoy pop culture side references in abundance from Taylor Swift to White Lotus! The main character, Eleanor Dash(yes, her Mom named her after her favorite fictional character from Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility) is on an Italian Tour for her 9th novel with other authors, an ex, Connor Smith, who has it out for her, her sister who is her personal assistant, another ex and fellow author Oliver, and a group of BookFace ladies who won the trip to join her including Kathy, an extreme fan of her work which Eleanor has a restraining order out for! On this Italian book tour, Connor has a few attempts on his life as does the author, Eleanor. With each passing day, a new and closer attempt to kill Eleanor occurs. On the 4th of July, they are enjoying a delicious Italian feast and she wonders aloud to the group if there will be fireworks. Her sister doesn’t think the 4th of July is celebrated outside of the US, but as they are leaving and walking along some perilous steps, they hear the fireworks and look up. In the next moment, Eleanor is shoved hard and begins to fall down the stairs. She realizes the fireworks may have been set up to cover her sounds, her scream, as she just begins to tumble backwards to what is definitely the second attempt on her life. Luckily Oliver is looking at her and catches Eleanor before she tumbles down to her death. He places her down gently. During this scene, the author, Catherine Mack does what she uses as a literary device and footnotes her asides as she’s writing and this is where most of the humor lies. She writes, “… he takes a step back and lets me go, and I’m on my own, just like I’ve always been.” footnote #107 Can you tell I listened to a lot of Tay-Tay as I wrote this? This is of course is in reference to the song, “You’re on Your Own” from Taylor Swift’s Midnights album which has the lyric, “… You’re on your own kid. Just like you’ve always been.” Towards the beginning of the novel, in one of her many footnotes, Catherine Mack has Eleanor Dash explain her backstory with Connor Smith and a mess he gets himself into. She notes “… Connor was hired by one of the bank’s insurance agencies to investigate the case, and I tagged along. I read all of Agatha Christie growing up and it was kind of like being thrown into one of her books. With a more dashing Hercules Piorot.” The story is not only structured like an Agatha Christie novel, but just last month I did a buddy read of “Who Murdered Roger Ackroyd” and “Every time I Go on Vacation Someone Dies” was reminding me of this novel specifically and in one of the author’s over 200 footnotes references this mystery out of all of Agatha Christie novels! This was also a very fast paced. action packed, story with many funny laughs throughout! I am looking forward to Catherine Mack’s next book,”No one Was Supposed to Die at This Wedding: a novel” (Vacation Mysteries #2) due to be published May 13, 2025. Thank you to NetGalley, Catherine Mack, and St. Martin’s Press for the ARC! 5⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ #bookreviewmaureenvandusky #LiterALLyBOOKiSh #MidnightsBookChallenge

Thank you to the author, publisher and @NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Okay, now I don’t know that I can express this correctly but I was hoping to love this. It’s a fun, cozy mystery set in Italy. I liked the ‘fun’ aspect of it, but found that the ‘fun’ was mostly included in footnotes, which I was not a huge fan of.

I also didn’t connect or care very much for our main cast because they were all supposedly quite smart but did a lot of silly, stupid things. That truly made me disconnect even more from the story.

This was a quick, quirky read but was by no means a top recommendation from me.

This book was fun!!! Its a great whodunnit and I loved reading this with my friends. This author is talented and I cannot wait to read her next upcoming read.

Thank you NetGalley for my arc. A perfect summer beach read! This was funny, yet suspenseful. I am intrigued to see where this series continues, and would love to see these characters end up on another international trip!

I knew I would love this book based on the title alone, but it was SO GOOD. It was just the right amount of snarky, I’m a sucker for footnotes and a sassy heroine, the setting was so interesting, and the twists and turns hit all the right notes. This author had an air of Lisa Lutz about her writing, and I absolutely loved that. PLEASE let this be a series.

Thank you to NetGalley and to the publisher for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Please see my full review at http://michelleardillo.com/2024/09/09/book-review-every-time-i-go-on-vacation-someone-dies-by-catherine-mack/.

This book had a very interesting title and much more interesting premise. The setting itself made me want to book a trip to Italy ASAP.

It was a nice quick whodunit for readers who’ve enjoyed the Finlay Donovan series. Writiing was really interesting, especially when Eleanor breaks the 4th wall to help the reader try to solve the mystery.

this cozy is very cute, it has a lot of good going for it-- HOWEVER it's super hard to read on the kindle, depending on which kindle you're reading on. my phone app slapped the footnotes where-ever it felt like. my kindle paper white was meh, the kindle fire was the worst, honestly. this is a book i would recommend picking up in paperback to enjoy the tactical experience and read the footnotes the way they should be read.

thanks st martins for the galley! i really enjoyed it!

Our main character, Eleanor Dash, is a fictional author on a book tour in Italy. She's mostly oblivious about her schedule and obligations and relies heavily on her sister to keep track of pretty much everything. When a murder occurs on the trip, our tour group (more frenemies than friends) work together to solve the mystery.

This was a unique concept for a cozy mystery and I found it fairly entertaining. The author relies heavily on footnotes, which I found distracting in the eBook format. I appreciated the light humor in the book, but at times it felt very forced. If this series continues, I liked it well enough to follow the characters into book 2. I might try the next one as an audiobook to see if it helps with the distracting footnote issue.

I had a lot of fun reading this book. I loved the format of the footnotes and between chapters extra info. I thought the entire thing was funny and I didn't see the twists and turns coming. I am looking forward to reading more from this author!

This was an interesting read.

Eleanor Dash has published 9 books in a series and is done. She is ready to kill off one of the main characters so she can get on with her real life. That said, she places an enormous amount of work onto her sister who is her assistant. This does not seem to track with me, being that their parents died when Eleanor was young and she became her sister's caretaker. When you say roles are reversed, they really are in this case. The mystery is well thought out, and the author does keep you guessing until the very end on who the killer is.

The format was a little hard to follow, but I assume that is because I was reading on my kindle. I did enjoy the story, but I could not connect with the main character. Perhaps she was too flippant in her behavior based on my experience with real authors? I also skipped most of the footnotes because again, on a kindle, it just seemed to hard to read.

A perfect summer beach read! This was funny, yet suspenseful. I am intrigued to see where this series continues, and would love to see these characters end up on another international trip!

This novel was a nice introduction to the cozy mystery genre for me.
This book was easy to get through and brought a couple laughs and smiles to my face. I loved the setting of the story (Italy) and how immersed I felt in the mystery. I also enjoyed the footnotes, It made the book feel more like an actual summary of real events.
One qualm I had for this book is the jab at Goodreads reviewers, it left a bad taste in my mouth.

Thank you to the author, publisher, and Net Galley for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review. This was a fun cozy mystery in a beautiful setting. Lots of suspects in this murder mystery to keep you guessing. With the footnotes and aside comments it would have been easier to understand as a physical book. I think the narrator did a great job with the characters. This does not meet the criteria for our high school library but I will recommend it to staff, family, and friends that read cozy mysteries

this book captured me from the title and from the first page. even the cover of this book is pretty and enticing. for someone who reads a lot of mystery’s i was very surprised that i didn’t guess who was trying to do it before the last act, so kudos to the author for that. other than that, this story just fell a little flat for me.

Cozy mysteries aren't usually my go to so I think this is why I didn't like this more. I thought the footnotes were very interesting and made the book a little more fun and different from other mysteries, but I feel like they would've been better on a physical copy versus the ebook. There were also a few cringey moments throughout the book. Overall, I thought this was just okay but the ending did take me by surprise!

What a unique concept for a mystery series! 🕵️‍♂️ I was really intrigued by the premise and couldn’t wait to dive in. Unfortunately, all the characters were pretty terrible, and I found myself wishing for just one or two I could root for. 😅

It was a solid read, but I’m not sure I’m motivated to pick up the next book in the series. 🤷‍♀️

Thanks to Net Gallery for the ARC.

I was looking forward to this book but it kind of fell flat to me. I wasn’t very pulled into the book and struggled getting through it. I didn’t enjoy the 4th wall being broke and the footnotes were really hard to read and I gave up half way through.

This being said I didn’t see the plot twist at the end coming and was shocked!

This cozy mystery is the first book in the Vacation Mysteries series, and although I am a big fan of both cozy mysteries and the author (known a Catherine Mackenzie), I did not like this one. I did not like the main character (which did not help), the story felt a bit all over the place, it lacked grounding, for the genre the crime (murder in this case) happens waaaaaaay too late in the story (it usually happens in the first 10% if it hasn't happened already when the book opens), so there wasn't enough (or much) sleuthing, aside from Eleanor trying to find who was trying to kill Connor (I didn't think she tried very hard, understandably, but for a mystery, it was lacking). An author bashing on GoodReads in a book? Cringey. And the whole "behind the curtains" approach was not my favorite. I hate when narrators break the fourth wall and address the reader directly (totally a me thing). So.... it's safe to say this book was not for me, and I would recommend any other book by this author before this one, but I have read many fantastic reviews, so do no let my review deter you from reading this one!
I have received a copy of this book for free and I am leaving this review voluntarily.