Review: A Most Agreeable Murder

A Most Agreeable Murder by Julia Seales
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

This book sounded like it would be so good, but I could not finish it. There were entirely too many things going on to make it a cohesive whole. I went into it thinking it would be a cozy mystery in the vein of Jane Austen. Which, in the very early pages, it was--a bit...there were a few anachronisms and details that would not have been true to society (and I don't mean the haute ton, I mean society as a whole) in Regency England. I was willing to overlook those and continued reading, despite the off-putting behavior of the father (I guess he was supposed to be funny? He just came across and an adolescent boy being inappropriate, in my option). I kept telling myself, "I guess this is supposed to be satire and we are making fun of the Regency Romance genre?" When the quiet sister kept giving off hairy rotting meat vibes, I couldn't go any further. I wasn't sure what direction the book was going in, but if the author had picked only one and left all of the other jarring plot points out, the book would have been so much better. Is it satire? Is it a cozy detective story? Is it a supernatural mystery? I did not like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, but that book was MUCH better than this one.
I was really looking forward to reading this book, but could not bring myself to finish it. If you are new to Regency novels and like bizarreness and books that have no through line or overarching theme, maybe you will enjoy this book. But otherwise I would definitely not recommend it. Not at all.

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