I have never been in a book group, least of all a murder mystery book group, so the idea really intrigued me, as did the premise of this book. When Hazel Rose’s fellow book lover, Carlene, dies after drinking a nice cup of what turned out to be cyanide-laced tea and falls off her perch, the immediate speculation is suicide, particularly considering there was a handy suicide note on the premises. Hazel does not believe that her lively friend (who is married to her ex-) the type to commit suicide, so she begins to investigate.

All of this is well and good, but, sadly, I didn’t care for the characters or the outcome of the story. It was too wordy, the editing was poor, and so many characters annoyed me to the point that I would have been greatly pleased had more of them dropped dead.

I wanted to love this. I love mysteries involving readers and the structure of the book club sounded pretty amazing. As well the murder was done in a fairly clever way. And that's about when it went out of the rails for me. I didn't like any of the characters and the obsession with sex got old. It seemed like all the characters talked about was who was having sex, who wasn't and what everyone thought about who was and who wasn't and everyone had an opinion about everything. I just didn't care. As well, it seemed a little odd that there was essentially no police involvement with the actual investigation. It wrapped up okay but it was not a book I was sorry to see the end of.

DNF

I attempted to start this book several times and, unfortunately, was never able to really get into it.

Very cool idea for a book, and an excellent execution of that idea. A thoroughly enjoyable read. Recommended. .

I really really thought this was going to be a fantastic read, I mean we have murder in a book group? How could that not be interesting? I feel the author over discussed and described things and it was totally unnecessary which just led to a boring and very long story. I quickly lost interest to the point of just not caring. I hate when that happens especially when the synopsis jumps out at me like this one did. :(