Review: How to Solve Your Own Murder

How to Solve Your Own Murder by Kristen Perrin
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I received an ARC of this book.
Normally I would round up, but it took me over a month to get through this book, and it was not easy. This is the story of a young woman named Annie whose great aunt has just died. Annie never knew her aunt, but when she travels to her home in the English countryside, she discovers this aunt was haunted by the disappearance of a friend back when they were 17, as well as the cryptic message she received from a fortune teller just before that friend disappeared. Annie works to find not only who killed her aunt, but also what happened back when her aunt was a teenager.
The story is told in alternating points of view, one in the present day from Annie, and one from the diaries of Annie's great aunt Frances. The diaries were certainly the better portions of the book. I struggled to connect with Annie, and the way characters, events, and circumstances were relayed in the present felt two-dimensional at best, boring and confusing at worst. I could not keep track of who was who--past and present--how they were related, and why things were such a big deal. The characters and mysteries in the past storyline should have really drawn me into the story and created an air of tension and suspense, but it all fell a bit flat, making it just uninteresting.
I really wanted to DNF several times, but I wanted to see who did it. But when that was revealed, it was incredibly underwhelming. I just did not care. I would not recommend this book--it will not draw you into the story, and if you put it down, by the time you pick it back up you will forget who over half the characters are and what purpose they serve.

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