Sadly DNF'D the audio book as characters not brought to life enough, including the main protagonist. Too many characters, too many things, with little explanation.

Less is more,.. go for quality & complexity done well, instead of too much & too little.

I was intrigued by this book from the moment I saw the title. It was a really great listen. The narrator was amazing. The story split into two timelines works really well. It's fast paced and not very predictble.

ALC review via NetGalley:

This book had an intriguing premise that was maintained throughout the story.
A small town, murder mystery with high stakes as a race is on to inherit the estate of the murdered woman.
Frances Adams has been preparing for her murder since she was sixteen years old following a fortune foretelling her murder. She's spent her life keeping notes on everyone in her life, and her obsession around her impending death has resulted in enemies made along the way.

I really enjoyed the use of flashbacks using to Frances' diary, and the mystery kept me guessing until the end. A complex cast of characters, with more than one unsolved murder to focus on. The clues Annie picks out are cleverly woven throughout the book in a way which doesn't make them glaringly obvious. This was an easy to read, fairly light and enjoyable story which I will purchase for my Mum as I know she'd enjoy it too. I would definitely read more from this author again.

I listen to a lot of audiobooks, especially during my daily commute, so I am familiar with following audiobooks well. The narrator was easy to listen to and helped create an enjoyable experience. The relatively large cast of characters made it slightly harder to follow however and I think I would have preferred to read the physical/ebook for this reason alone.

How To Solve Your Own Murder was amazing on audio. The narration gave life to an already fantastic story. If you love funny, quirky, cosy crime/mysteries, you'll love this. Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance audio copy.

I listened to this new debut novel on audiobook and found the narration well done and I felt the voice suited the characters.

The story is a dual time line as the main character Annie tries to solve the murder of her great aunt to be able to inherit from the will and get to stay in what has been her family home for many years. ( so a lot is a stake here)
I thought the idea of the story was good. I usually enjoy a dual timeline tale and felt the addition of two people trying to solve a murder and the winner get the inhabitants a bit different from the norm.
However I often found my attention drifting in parts as it just didn't seem to really grab my interest. There were parts that were good but I just felt it was a little thin and if Annie had read the diaries a bit quicker, she would have found the answers a lot sooner.
Not bad for a debut though.

Frances clutched the fortune teller's pronouncement, a chill snaking down her spine despite the summer heat. "Beware the bird," it hissed, a cryptic message that would cast a long shadow over her life. Obsessed with unraveling its meaning, Frances spent decades interpreting the cryptic clues, building a future based on warding off a prophesied doom.

Fast forward sixty years. Enter Annie, a young woman unexpectedly summoned by a long-lost great-aunt. Thrust into the heart of a family she never knew, Annie inherits a fortune and a chilling secret: Frances's murder. Armed with a cryptic diary and meticulously crafted "murder boards," Annie delves into the past, determined to solve the present.

However, the path to the truth is littered with obstacles. The secrets locked within the diary, penned by a teenage Frances, feel distant and immature. The present-day characters, while drawn into the investigation, lack genuine depth. Ultimately, the weight of the mystery crumbles under the lack of emotional investment. The "fun and original premise," as many reviewers noted, loses traction in the face of underdeveloped characters and a narrative that struggles to resonate.

This was quite an entertaining story and I was interested to discover who was responsible for past and present mysteries. However towards the end the main character behaved in an utterly ridiculous way that completely disengaged me from the story.

I thought the narrator did a very good job though and was a pleasure to listen to.

It was a shame as there was a lot to like up until this point, but I’m afraid this wasn’t for me and I wouldn’t recommend.

2 stars for the story, but an extra 1 as I enjoyed the narrator..

*** Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher ***

I am hugely grateful to NetGalley for giving me the opportunity to read an ARC of this book. I thoroughly enjoyed listening to this audiobook - so good that I kept trying to find household tasks to undertake which could justify me listening to it. It was a very easy listen, and I thought that the juxtaposition of excerpts from the 1970s diary alongside investigations in the present time was a great way to develop understanding of the relationships between the different characters. It has to be said I had no idea who the murderer was/murderers were - but I thought it was well-explained how Annie had reached her conclusions.

This was another book that I enjoyed because of the format of delivery. There are two narrators, one for the older timeline and one for the current. Both did a good job bringing the book to life.

As I started writing the review I thought back about the reveal since I figured out the culprit while I was listening to the book at the time in guessing the author meant for us to. Surprisingly though, I had to recollect the entire process of the plot to get to the reveal! That was new for me. It basically meant that the story has its way of being prominent and keeping one’s interest over just wanting to know the end result.

The past has three friends who are intertwined in each other’s lives. One of them receives a fortune about her being murdered in the future, or it is the most straightforward interpretation of the fortune teller’s statement. Another of them actually vanishes and this casts a shadow over the others’ lives.

In the present, we have a gathering of people who have a stake in a will. I liked the combination of people who end up in the same frame and how they interact. The flow of the story is entirely practical and was fun to follow. I would definitely read another book by the author and recommend this to others who find the blurb or this review interesting.

I received an ARC thanks to Netgalley and the publishers but the review is entirely based on my own listening experience.

How to Solve Your Own Murder is a cosy, Agatha Christie-esque, engrossing mystery, and a great read.

‘Frances always said she would be murdered…and she was right’. What a great tagline, and perfectly reflective of the twisty, who-can-you-trust, everyone-has-a-secret, slightly tongue in cheek nature of this story. The prose was engaging and well delivered, and created an atmosphere that perfectly balanced sinister undertones with warm characters and occasional light relief. I really enjoyed Annie’s gumption and perseverance, and the way her character played off Detective Crane.

The double murder and alternating timelines were really interesting and kept me guessing right up to the end. I really enjoyed this as an audiobook- the character voices were so distinct and animated. I had to double check how many narrators there were, because the transitions were so seamless!

Thank you Quercus and NetGalley for a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed are my own.

If you love a cosy, murder mystery, complete with country house and rich people getting taken down then this is the book for you! I really enjoyed listening to this story, the narrator does a fabulous job of building the suspense, and the pacing is perfect. I would highly recommend and I can’t wait for more from this author!

Thank you so much NetGalley and the publisher!

For me, this book had a really interesting and gripping premise, but it did not give any more than that.

I did enjoy the writing style and the characters, but it felt like something was missing to give it that spark?

This does feel like a Agatha Christie/Sherlock Holmes/Nancy Drew kind of mystery, so if you do enjoy a classic mystery then you will definitely enjoy this.

A solid 3 stars for me!

I’m not normally a fan of cosy crime but I think as this was on the border between classic country house mystery and lighter crime it did really work. The story is a little convoluted to begin with but it centres on wannabe mystery author Annie who has to go down to the country house in the heart of Devon for the first time to meet her great-aunt Frances, who has lived her life under the paranoia of a fortune that predicted that she would one day be murdered. It’s a very fun, light-hearted read and the mystery of the friend who disappeared almost forty years before is what gives the story its intrigue and power. There’s light romance and the sort of story that ends in tea and buns. The only element I found a little strange is that all the characters were gathered together again in the countryside for a mystery that was both of the present and far back in the past and yet Anne the protagonist never really got around to interviewing or speaking to anyone and so the narrative relied over heavily on the conveniently found diary of Annie’s great-aunt.

I absolutely adored this, flew straight through the audiobook in possible the quickest time - the narrator was wonderful too.

A really cosy yet suspenseful mystery, that kept me guessing till the end which is a must in a mystery book as imo there’s nothing worse than the MC figuring out the answer after the reader 😅.

It’s not often I get excited about the little #1 next to a book title meaning there’s a series I need to commit too, but this is one I am counting the days till the next instalment for! The writing is wonderful and the character building is really on point.

Thank you NetGalley for providing this ARC in audio.

I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.
I like cozy mysteries and I saw this book everywhere, so I was so happy to get an ARC from the audiobook. In my opinion, the hype wirth the book even though I rated the book 4 stars in the end, but I think it would be higher if I read this book physically.
I did not read the synopsys of the book, I just read the title, saw the hype and the genre, and I just know that I want to read this book. I preffer not reading the synopsys as it can be sometimes very spoilery. I thought that this book will be abouth the main character's death but it was a typical murder mystery. it was not an issue just I though that this will be a little more unique in that way.
As I already said, overall loved the book. Every issue which I had was because of the audiobook. I listened an ARC copy, so I'm not sure that the end product will be the same, but in my copy the narrator take too much break between the sentences. I was annoying. I listened to a sentence. Then silence. And I was thinkining that it was the end of the chapter or what? Then got a new sentence. Then silence again. I read it with 2x speed. I am not sure that the issue is because of the narrator, I these breaks should have been edited out. It was so annoying for me. In other cases, I liked the narrator.
Also, the story had two many characters. We had a dual timeline with a multiple characters, so there were at least 20 characters. I remembered the main characters but forgot about a few. In the end, I was so confused that who is the killer because I had no clue who was that character. When I read physycally, I remember the names more easily, so maybe it's just a me thing, but I don't recommend just the audiobook because of this. Also the dual timeline was a little bit confusing in this format.
I liked the atmosphere of the book, I liked the main characters, I liked the writing and the story was good in my opinion, so I recommend reading the book, just not in audiobook format (only). Also, it says that this is a beginning of a new series, but it can be read as a standalone. The story completely finished, every thread was closed, so if a person wants to just read as a standalone, it can be done.

A bit slow at first, this was a classic murder mystery, made even better by the excellent narration.
Thanks to NetGalley, the editor and the author for the opportunity to access this copy.

What a good read, kept me on my toes all the way through. I really enjoyed this dual timeline mystery and once I started I couldn’t put it down.

Frances spends all her life to prevent her own murder, but still murder found her at 60 years old.
This book will following "competition" between her relates to solve her murder as requirement to earn the inheritance.

Told from two POV and two timeline, the author guide us to follow Annie (great niece)'s idea of investigation because she is crime mystery wannabe. And another trace events from France's younger life. The pace is slower than my favorite. I found out Frances's pov intriguing me more than Annie's. Her banter isnt seem natural and some of her scenes wont gave strong advance into the mystery.

I found this book is enjoyable but not the best from the author. The narrator doing her best to take reader into the story. I can feel the atmosphere and the emotions from each characters.
3.5

Thank you to Netgalley and Quercus for providing audio copy of this book. I have voluntarily read and reviewed it. All thoughts and opinions are my own. Expecting Publication : 23 March 2024

This was an intriguing cosy murder mystery with a brilliant premise. I really enjoyed the setup of this book and the village feel and characters. I'm pleased this is the start of a series as I can't wait to go back to the village.

What a audiobook! I really enjoyed this and it was solid! I think the pacing was a bit different to the mysteries than I'm used to, but I honestly didn't see that twist coming at the end!