Harper Audio – Review: 5 Stars

Thanks so much to the author, Libro.fm, and William Morrow Books (Harper Audio) for the complimentary advanced audio copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are entirely my own. { partner } All of my reviews can also be found on Instagram @Tackling_TBR and on Goodreads.

TW : death, murder, suicide, self-harm, revenge, drowning, kidnapping, hazing, abortion, infidelity, “boys will be boys” mindset

I have always been a big fan of Agatha Christie, and this book gave me so many Agatha Christie vibes! It was a really interesting mystery with a weird mix between a slow-burn of a story but still a fast-paced novel that I just didn’t want to put down.

One thing that I really loved about this story was all of the different points of view that we got. This is one of those murder mysteries where just about everyone that you meet could have had some sort of motive. And yes, at times that can seem pretty coincidental like “oh, you had a problem with this person that would be enough for a motive? Wow, so do I! How crazy is that?” But it’s a wedding, so it makes sense that all of the people there would be connected in one way or another, right? So the setting made that a bit easier to get past for me. It made it really fun and thrilling to listen to because even once you found out who the victim was (oh yeah, worth noting that for the first 2/3 of the book they’re just referring to a body, and you don’t find out who it is until much later) there were so many different ways that the story could go that I wanted to keep listening to find out what would happen next.

So let’s talk audio books. This book was PHENOMENAL on audio! Books with tons of different POVs like this one can sometimes be really hard to follow (seriously though, there were so many, you got the bride, the bridesmaid, the best man, the wedding planner, a guest, and I think another one or two) particularly on audio, but this one was done in such a smart way. There were different voice actors/narrators cast for each character’s point of view, and so even if you didn’t remember exactly which voice was the bride and which voice was the bridesmaid, I found it really easy to keep track of which voice was telling which part of the story. And the entire cast did so well, the different voices and the inflections, everything was just really well done. As much as I’m sure this book is a good physical read, I would almost recommend the audio book over the print copy, just to really throw yourself into the middle of the mystery with this amazing cast.

Overall I would highly recommend this book. Sure there were a few parts that were a little bit slower for me, but for the most part I thought it was just a really well written visit to the old days of the classic whodunnit thrillers. And seriously, listen to this one on audio. You absolutely will not regret it. I think the perfect way to listen to this book would be on a stormy winter/autumn night next to a roaring fire place, hearing the rain outside against your windows. It feels absolutely worthy of “a dark and stormy night.”