Suddenly a Murder Suddenly a Murder

Suddenly a Murder

    • 3.9 • 7 Ratings
    • $10.99
    • $10.99

Publisher Description

Seven friends throw a 1920s–themed party, where it's all pretend—until one of them is murdered. One of Us Is Lying meets Knives Out in this glamorous locked-room mystery.

"A can't miss for mystery fans." —Kathleen Glasgow, New York Times bestselling author of Girl in Pieces and The Agathas


Someone brought a knife to the party.

To celebrate the end of high school, Izzy Morales joins her ride-or-die Kassidy and five friends on a 1920s–themed getaway at the glamorous Ashwood Manor. There, Izzy and her friends party in vintage dresses and expensive diamonds—until Kassidy’s boyfriend turns up dead.

Murdered, investigators declare when they arrive at the scene, and now every party guest is a suspect. There’s the girlfriend, in love. The other girl, in despair. The old friend, forlorn. The new friend, distressed. The brooding enigma. And then, there’s Izzy—the girl who brought the knife.

To find the killer, everyone must undergo a grueling interrogation, all while locked in an estate where, suddenly, the greatest luxury is innocence.

GENRE
Young Adult
RELEASED
2023
September 5
LANGUAGE
EN
English
LENGTH
320
Pages
PUBLISHER
Penguin Young Readers Group
SELLER
PENGUIN GROUP USA, INC.
SIZE
2.2
MB

Customer Reviews

KThugs3 ,

Not a huge fan of this one

2.5 stars. I really WANTED to LOVE this book, but alas, it just wasn’t for me. The premise of a murder during a 1920s themed party has actually popped up a lot recently— giving me anything from Kill Joy vibes (a good girls guide to murder novella) to “The Afterparty” television show. I should have been weary just from the summary of the book alone. However, I wanted an easy read after indulging in a sci-fy novel that was over 800 pages, so I picked this one up. Now I understand it is a YA novel, and I’m in my mid30s, so perhaps I wasn’t the target demographics anyways. That being said, I love me a good YA murder mystery or suspense novel. I’ve read a lot of great YA murder mystery’s like the Good Girls Guide to Murder and One of Us is Lying are examples of two that I did happen to love. I saw where in the acknowledgments at the end of the book, the author mentioned putting off studying for finals in law school so she could go and grab ‘Breaking Dawn,’ (from Twilight series) when it first came out. And I absolutely H A T E D the twilight series…. if I would have known that was the YA series she was mostly drawn to, I would have skipped this one for sure.

My issues with the book:
1.When there are multiple POVs, I enjoy when you can tell which perspective we are reading from because the author will make each character sound and think differently. It was easy enough to figure out which character was who based off of who they were obsessed with or whatever in that chapter, but ultimately - all of the characters sounded the same and thus you knew they were from the same author. Just an example— having one of the girls who are supposed to be outgoing and sort of ditzy as someone who may say “um, like” a lot. Or perhaps only one character would constantly use big words to try to sound smarter or whatever. (A book that comes to mind that did a wonderful job with this type of POV thing would be ‘Atlas Six’ for example.)
2. We get it- the kids come from insanely wealthy families, except for the main character, Isadora. How many times is this in a plot line though? There’s always one kid in the group of wealthy kids who’s there on scholarship and does not come from a wealthy family.
3. Blane was murdered early in the week, and the detectives and kids are just allowed to stay there all week and continue to party it up? (Even though they aren’t in a partying mood.) I know this is a fiction book, and obviously isn’t realistic… but this is just so far from being believable that it took a lot of the enjoyment from me because I’m busy thinking about it from the legal side. And since the author is a lawyer, too, you’d think she’d try to fit some of that kind of background into her novel.
4. Without getting into too many details, there’s a subplot/flashback within the novel that shows how unkind an athlete is to someone they had been hooking up with, for fear of being outed or else being made fun of? And since this is such a common issue (essentially homophobia), I hate to see when it’s a plot line in this type of capacity. I just feel that it could have been left out of the book. Or there could have been another reason as to why the athlete didn’t want to be around that particular person.
5. The last sentence. Like it had literally JUST happened the night before, yet Izzy is saying “ For the first time since I walked away from Kassidy on the bluff, I feel light. Really? By saying “for the first time,” they make it seem like it’s been years that Izzy has been unhappy.
6. For that matter - even if everyone was arguing with Blane and whatnot- don’t tell me that those kids would all just hang out there, cracking jokes or drinking and acting like it’s not too big of a deal. None of them, minus Kassidy the girlfriend, are even showing signs of being upset at all that someone they have all hung out with for at least 4 years was murdered.
7. We also know the detectives would be grilling them for MANY HOURS, and not 4-5 questions.
8.

Things I liked:
1. How the cast of characters are all unique and there is LGBTQ representation.
2. How the author was able to school the readers a little bit by having a character make a point that just makes sense. When someone commented on a boy drinking girlie drinks, one of the characters pointed out that drinks aren’t gendered. And the character/author is absolutely right.

Overall, I know if I had read this when I was about 13 or so, I would have liked this book. Where it stands, I found it almost painful due to not being realistic in the slightest. At the same time though, I can see why some may enjoy it.

I’d say that if you are an adult, then this would be the perfect book to read at the beach (fast & easy book that you don’t need to invest much thinking about.)

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