A great follow up to How to Solve Your Own Murder. I love the double story line—reminds me of Anthony Horowitz’s Atticus Pund/Susan Ryland books. And the slow burn romance (ongoing flirtation) between Annie and Crane reminds me of the PBS series Miss Scarlet and the Duke. Can’t wait for the next installment.

Kristen Perrin brings us the second installment of the Castle Knoll series in How to Seal Your Own Fate. I fell in love with How to Solve Your Own Murder and was so excited to travel back to Gravesdown Hall and solve another mystery with Annie. This book starts off with another fortune from Peony Lane and then her subsequent murder which is tied to another murder from 1967 that great Aunt Frances was investigating. The chapters toggle from present to past, and from Annie's POV to Frances'.

I am living for the budding friendship between Annie and Rowan Crane, the lead police investigator. Annie's friend Jenny sees it too, and the winks and knowing looks and running out of the room when Rowan is around makes it all the better!

This is not a stand alone book. It has to be read in sequence with the first one. Even though I did read and absolutely LOVE the first one, I read it so long ago that I had some trouble recalling some of the details from the first one vital to the understanding of this one. My only other criticism of this book as opposed to the first one is that this one seemed to have so many more characters and intricate details. I found myself getting confused or forgetting things/having to go back and reread things.

Overall, I loved the book. These mysteries are top tier, and as the author has seemingly left the door open for the next book, I will be waiting on tenterhooks.. Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Group Dutton for sharing this digital reviewer copy with me for my honest review. All opinions are 100% my own.

Thank you PENGUIN GROUP Dutton for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

Summary: Two women, decades apart, unravel deadly secrets and tangled lies in the idyllic yet sinister village of Castle Knoll, where murder, betrayal, and a cryptic warning threaten to destroy their lives.

My review: In the sequel to "How to Solve Your Own Murder" this mystery weaves together two timelines, expertly alternating between the perspectives of Frances Adams in 1967 and her great-niece Annie Adams in the present day. This second installment more challenging to follow than its predecessor. The complex web of characters and their interconnected relationships across different time periods can be difficult to keep track of at times. Still, I will definitely read book 3 to see where the series goes!

Genres/Themes: Fiction / Mystery & Detective - Amateur Sleuth / Mystery & Detective - Cozy / Mystery & Detective - Women Sleuths

"How to Seal Your Own Fate" is scheduled for publication on April 29, 2025, by PENGUIN GROUP Dutton.

Castle Knoll seems like a nice little village with plenty of gossip and secrets! Like the first book, I enjoyed the alternating POVs with Frances and Annie. While an entertaining mystery, I didn't find this one as easy to follow as the first book. I'm excited to learn about Annie's fortune in the third book and hope we get more progress on the budding relationship between Annie and Detective Crane. 3.5 stars.

Annie Adams is back at it in Castle Knolls. She’s just starting to settle into the Gravesdown Estate and consider making it her own when she finds herself forced to confront more mysteries from the bowels of Frances’ files. Along with Detective Crane and best friend Jenny, what revelations will she unearth this time around?

Kristen Perrin continues to keep me on my toes guessing and wondering just who done it as we follow along with Annie through her present day and as she traces her aunt’s own mystery solving efforts. My only complaint is that the romance in this book is SLOW burn in the present and remarkably quick in the past. I know I’ll continue to follow this series and if you like an anglophilic mystery, you should too!

Thanks to NetGalley and Dutton for the opportunity to early review.

I loved How to Solve Your Own Murder and couldn't wait for this one! I enjoyed it well enough, but it didn't engross me like I hoped. There was a lot of telling and not very much showing. Still looking forward to the next installment.

How to Seal Your Own Fate is more of a companion novel to How to Solve Your Own Murder than it is a sequel. I wish I had read the second immediately after the first. It has been nine months and it took me some time to remember who the characters were and their relationships to each other.

The story moves between diaries written by Frances (now dead) in the 1960s and narration by Annie, her great niece, in the present. There are new mysteries and new murders, but they are all still intimately connected to the events of book 1. Go read it first.

This was an easy, diverting read that didn’t require any work from me. It’s fun, light. Nothing to worry about; plenty of deaths but no one we are set up to care about. There’s some pretty convoluted stuff going on, but eh, just go with it. I have to say, living in a big old manor house with a solarium sounds kind of amazing. Hoping for forward movement in the romance department with the handsome detective in book three.

I read an advance reader copy from Netgalley.

I really enjoy the Castle Knoll setting and the wide range of characters. I thought the plot was intriguing and a captivating mystery, but I found it quite hard to follow. I liked the alternating past and present chapters and how the two different crimes from the eventually intersected, but overall the story was convoluted. I wouldn't have understood what had happened if it wasn't spelled out in the final chapters.

Thank you to Penguin Group Dutton and NetGalley for providing me with this ARC.

If you were a fan of the first round of this series, I highly recommend you jump back in.

The story follows the came cast of characters with a couple new additions and a few new highlighted characters. Great mix of building on existing character development without making it feel too stale.

The mystery was a total twist as well, occasionally feeling the two timelines and ensuing charters got a bit hectic, but Perrin does an excellent job reeling things back in with subtle but helpful recaps from time to time. While I flipped back and forth a few times to test theories, I only checked once in the book to see if I mixed up facts.

Really well written, enjoyable mystery!
Thanks to Perrin, Dutton Books and NetGalley for the ARC!

I loved How To Solve Your Own Murder and was thrilled to see the second installment lives up to the first. It’s well-folded into the original to give context and reminders without being overly repetitive. The book can stand alone but is much better understood when reading the first before.

The plot and twists build on characters from the first but still take on their own distinctness that kept the story fresh. Though well explained, I thought the resolution was more complicated and still took me a while to get a full grasp of.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

How to Seal Your Own Fate(Castle Knoll Files #2) by Kristen Perrin

If you read and enjoyed How to Solve your Own Murder (Castle Knoll Files #1), then you will enjoy this one as well. It is similarly fast paced with some twists making it another fun read.

This is the second installment of the Castle Knoll Files and I highly recommend reading the first book in the series, How to Solve Your Own Murder, before reading this one. While the murder investigation is resolved in the first book, this story continues on from events that are referred to, if not occurred, in that book.

The story goes back and forth in time, from Frances’ diaries and files we learn about her early adult life before she was married to Ford Gravesdown to the present day and Annie Adams’ investigation into Peony’s murder. Soon after Annie met Peony (the fortune teller who predicted that Annie’s Aunt Frances would be murdered), she and her friend Jenny found Peony dead in the solarium at the Gravesdown Estate, where Annie now lives.

Why was Peony murdered? Did she know too much? Was it connected to an earlier death (an accident or murder)? Was she involved – directly or indirectly? Annie’s Investigation includes both an investigation of Peony’s death and the events of the past (using Frances’ documentation).

This is a fun quick read that I recommend to fans of series like The Marlow Murder Club and The Thursday Murder Club where the protagonists – friends who are solving mysteries - get themselves involved w/local police while solving them.

Thank you to NetGalley, Penquin Group Dutton and Kristen Perrin for an advanced copy of this book.

How to Seal Your Own Fate is the perfect addition to the Castle Knoll series! Having read the first book, I loved how this one deepened the mystery of the village while introducing new twists and secrets. The dual timelines are just as gripping as before—Annie’s present-day fight to clear her name and Frances’ 1967 investigation kept me hooked. The characters are relatable, the pacing is spot-on, and the eerie charm of Castle Knoll adds so much atmosphere.

If you loved the first book, this one will not disappoint! It’s a must-read for fans of small-town mysteries with layers of suspense. 🔍✨

Thank you NetGalley and Penguin House Dutton for this ARC!

The first book was a hard act to follow! This one was simultaneously a bit over-complicated in parts and not quite as engaging as How to Solve Your Own Murder. It’s clear there are more books to come, because the author leaves a lot of loose ends throughout the book. That would be fine, but I wish that some of the characters with loose ends had a liiiittle bit more character development in this book.

Overall, a worthy read, but I’m not sure it was quite as good as the first Castle Knoll book.

💫 Okay, like, can we just take a moment to talk about how ridiculously fun and twisty this book is? If you’re into mysteries that keep you guessing while serving up small-town charm, drama, and just the right sprinkle of humor, this is so your vibe.

The whole dual-timeline thing? Total chef's kiss. You've got Annie sleuthing her way through present-day chaos (um, a murder in her greenhouse? Yikes!) while digging through her late Aunt Frances' journals from the '60s. Frances was a total icon, BTW—bold, nosy, and maybe a little scandalous. It’s like the perfect mash-up of cozy mystery meets vintage intrigue. Love it.

Also, the town of Castle Knoll is practically a character in itself. The secrets? The gossip? The whole eerie, everyone-knows-everything energy? Ob-sessed. And the fortune-teller’s ominous prophecy is just chef's kiss the cherry on top of this delightfully twisty plot.

Okay, real talk: it does slow down a tiny bit in the middle, but honestly, I didn’t even care because the story is just that good. Plus, Annie and Frances are such fabulous sleuths in their own unique ways—one cautious and modern, the other bold and vintage. It's impossible not to root for them.

✨ Final verdict: 4 stars and an absolutely must-read if you're into clever mysteries with heart and humor.

Many thanks to NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest opinion! 😘

In Kristen Perrin's first book, How to Solve Your Own Murder, we get to know the history of Frances, and her fortune that she would be murdered, through her diary entries. Annie, her great niece, solves the mystery of who murdered Frances and why. In that book, In this book, another murder takes place, Annie must try to solve the murder by revisiting experiences Frances friends had with her while they were growing up. Perrin expertly interweaves the two books together. I was thoroughly captivated by the story, and found myself going back to the first book to jiggle my memory about events that led up to the present novel.

I really liked this one. I enjoyed the first story and liked the sequel. I felt like it was of similar quality. The books feel similar to a cozy mystery, but are not marketed that way which is my only gripe.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for a copy of this sequel to How to Solve Your Own Murder!

This series is super fun. I would definitely consider these cozy mysteries and honestly, that's not my fav sub genre of mystery. However, the plot, characters, setting and writing just are so good.

In this sequel, we are reunited with Annie and all the Castle Knoll village folks. There of course is murder, mystery, diary entries from Frances, and mischief. Loved how we got even more background on other characters in this book.

I just wanted more of Crane. Just a smidge. Not a ton. Also, his explanation for his relationship with the new boss felt flat and tbh lame. '

But I really know is I wish I could stay in the big house myself with its solarium. Already (im)patiently waiting for book 3.

This is the second book in the Castle Knoll Files. We follow Annie on her journey to solve yet another mystery. While this was entertaining, it was a bit too slow for me personally. I wish that in the beginning, there had been some sort of recap of the characters from the first book. If you enjoy a cozy mystery, look no further and pick this one up.

Oh. My. Goodness. There are so many secrets and mysteries in the town of Castle Knoll and I love it!! The first book in this series was great and then this one did not disappoint either!! The journal entries are still my favorite. I really hope there are more books in the series on the way!

A huge thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the advanced copy. All opinions expressed above are my own.

𝗥𝗔𝗧𝗜𝗡𝗚: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
𝗥𝗘𝗟𝗘𝗔𝗦𝗘 𝗗𝗔𝗧𝗘: April 29, 2025
𝗔𝗥𝗖 𝗥𝗘𝗩𝗜𝗘𝗪:

Very cozy, very mysterious and I love a good cozy mystery. We get to follow into this part two of the Castle Knoll Files and I loved this as much as I loved the first book.
I’m a huge Agatha Christie fanatic and when I found Kristens How To Solve Your Own Murder, it gave me Agatha vibes and I am officially hooked into this series. We have a murder, many secrets and as usual, nobody knows anything and we follow Annie while she tries to solve this murder before someone else’s’ life is at stake. We have present and past timelines and they transition flawlessly. This book will have you guessing along the way and who knows, you can play Nancy Drew and figure it out before the ending, but I never figured it out…the ending I did not see coming. Such a fun fast paced who done it read that will keep you on your toes the entire time. I recommend reading book one before jumping into book two.

Large thank you to our Author, NetGalley as well as Penguin Group Dutton, Dutton, Viking.