Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for the ARC! Unfortunately, I had to DNF at 15%, and I really tried to read it. It's so slow- so so slow. It was repetitive, overly descriptive and just not that interesting of a premise. An old lady who sounds like she was kind of an a-hole gets murdered after a psychic told her she'd be murdered. She was alive for a ridiculous amount of time, so her murder wasn't eminent or anything. And the disappearance? Pass. 3/5 stars just because I DNF.

I loved the idea of this book and was excited to start it. We meet Annie who has just been told that she is now the main beneficiary in her Great Aunt Frances's will. Following a fortune telling when she was a teenager, Frances has been obsessed that she will be murdered and has spent her life investigating everyone she has come into contact with. When the beneficiaries gather at Frances's house, it would appear that the prophecy has come true as Frances is discovered dead.

I enjoyed the start of the book when we get to meet Annie and the other beneficiaries. Annie has never met her Great Aunt Frances, so you can understand the mistrust between some of the others and herself. The story is told from present day from Annie's perspective and from Frances's earlier years and initially both stories were as intriguing. Many of the other characters had known Frances since her teenage years, and if you throw in the present day characters of the Detective, the property developer and medical staff there becomes an awful lot of people to suspect of killing Great Aunt Frances.

The storyline, particularly the present day line, began to slow a little and I have to admit to getting a little confused with all the characters. Frances's early years storyline was more interesting and I enjoyed these parts more as the book moved on. However, I did find myself losing interest and struggled to stay focussed on where the storyline was going. Such a shame as I loved the idea of the book and really wanted to like it. I did follow it through to the end though, and liked the ending when it was revealed what had happened. A good idea, but a little slow and too many characters for my liking.

Just brilliant. A book packed with oddities, nasty relatives trying to trip people up, a police team that might be trustworthy and a batty fairground premonition that shapes several lives. Mixing in passages from an old diary to the murder mystery works really well and dragging in confusing and cruel relatives to twist the story and cloud the waters is great. A proper who done it with a very modern twist.

Not quite what I expected,but an excellent read all the same. An interesting cast of characters,two stories past and present intertwined. Plenty of twists.

This was such a wonderful and enjoyable read!!!! I loved this book and highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys this genre. Thank you so much to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This is an engrossing tale set in the sixties and present day.

The heroine, Annie Adams, hears she has been chosen to be the sole heir to her Great Aunt Frances’ fortune. But Annie has never met Frances and until a request to meet her at her vast house arrives it has been Annie’s own mother who was due to inherit.

What unfolds is a dual narrative as we read Frances’ diary for 1965/6 when she is seventeen and what happens as Annie arrives at the local village of Castle Knoll in the present. And Annie is there to help Frances solve a mystery that has worried her for nearly sixty years: who is going to murder her?

This is a quick read with lots of possible leads that kept me gripped and I truly did not suspect the murderer(s) until right at the end. Very satisfying and enjoyable. If you like a mystery this one is excellent.

I read a copy provided by NetGalley and the publishers.

Was really excited about this book, after reading the synopsis and all the hype the publishers created but I was so let down this wasn’t wanted I was hoping for at all!!!

The opening prologue had me interested and excited but from there it moved to boring chapters told in the first person POV set in the present and to diary entries set in the past. Neither added anything to the book but the past diary entries were far better than the present day chapters.

The premise of the plot is interesting and could have stood up well if it wasn’t for the lacklustre, cliched characters all of whom were flat and annoying. Annie the lead in particular is so boring and dull. The conversations between the characters don’t read naturally they sound the like a playbook of woke falseness…hard to read.

I think the author was trying to go down the Agatha Raisin type of writing but she didn’t achieve this at all, while the storyline is a bit bonkers it’s not that, that holds it back it’s the overwhelming sense of tweeness and the fact it’s all over the place with strands of stories and really annoying characters. While a lot of books like this requires you to leave real life at the door this is too much

This book could have been amazing the plot lines are there but going down the happy go lucky style of writing lets it down. I feel if the writer had taken a darker style I could have forgiven the “real world” problems extremely white middle class conflicts, and with some pulling back on the clique( trying to make the characters like Agatha Raisin ones) characters this could have been what the synopsis hints at.

This is a cosy crime don’t be fooled by the cover, it is also not a stand out cost crime in anyway in fact I think it will be lost in what is an overcrowded genre.

Really wasn’t for me but two stars for the initial plot line.

Annie is a young woman with ambitions to be a writer. She lives with her mother, an artist, in a house belonging to her great-aunt Frances. Out of the blue Frances contacts her to say she is now the main beneficiary in her will. For years Frances has been obsessed with her own murder since having her fortune told as a teenager.

The novel goes back and forth between past and present, detailing the relationships Frances had with her friends and the disappearance of one of them.

I'm afraid the story didn't grip me and I found it a struggle to get to the end. There was no real tension in the tale and I didn't really care about the characters. I can't say more without spoilers.

Thanks to Quercus and NetGalley for the ARC. 2.5 stars rounded up to 3.

This was an intriguing premise for a murder mystery with Frances being obsessed throughout her life by a prophecy that she would be murdered and being suspicious of everyone in the village she has lived throughout her life. Told both in present day from the viewpoint of her great niece Annie who has been summonsed to the village regarding Frances’s will and from extracts from Frances’s diary from back in the sixties leading up the time one of her closest friends mysteriously disappeared. It was very easy to feel suspicious of the villagers especially as there were families where several generations still lived there, the elder of which linked back to extracts in the diary. Annie’s main rival for the inheritance was an extremely strange character as was his wife and I don’t think I would have trusted them easily if I were Annie. For me personally I found the mystery of the missing friend more compelling than Frances’s murder as she came across as quite a complicated character. Although the diary extracts offered a good insight into Frances’s mind I would have liked to have seen more info from the dossiers she composed on her friends and neighbours, I guess I had a preconception this might be more a Janice Hallett style book but it’s not. I did enjoy discovering the different dynamics of the villagers and some of their shady secrets, it’s definitely not a quiet village so as a character read it’s good but a slow burner on the crime side. 7/10

Annie's Great Aunt Frances has sent for her. Reclusive, eccentric Great Aunt Frances. Whom Annie has never met.

Great Aunt Frances owns the house that Annie and her mother Laura live in. So they suppose it's something to do with her will.

But Annie never gets to meet Great Aunt Frances, because she's dead.

And she's been predicting her death for the last sixty years. Because Great Aunt Frances believed that she would be murdered for what she knew...

Brilliant