I finished my first book of the year and am ready to share my thoughts on Every Time I Go on Vacation, Someone Dies by Catherine Mack. Let’s start with the basic information.
Pages: 344
Part of Series: Yes. Book 1 of 2
Genre: Cozy mystery
Published: April 30, 2024
Summary via Amazon:
All that bestselling author Eleanor Dash wants is to get through her book tour in Italy and kill off her main character, Connor Smith, in the next in her Vacation Mysteries series—is that too much to ask?
Clearly it is, because when an attempt is made to kill the real Connor—the handsome but infuriating con man she got mixed up with ten years ago and now can’t get out of her life—Eleanor’s enlisted to help solve the case.
Contending with literary competitors, rabid fans, a stalker—and even her ex, Oliver, who turns up unexpectedly—theories are bandied about, and rivalries, rifts, and broken hearts are revealed. But who’s really trying to get away with murder?
Every Time I Go on Vacation, Someone Dies is an irresistible and hilarious series debut from Catherine Mack, introducing bestselling fictional author Eleanor Dash on her Italian book tour where life starts to imitate the world in her books when she’s caught up in a real-life murder mystery.
My thoughts:
The book was okay. I would recommend it to someone who loves cozy mysteries and likes the Finlay Donovan books.
Every Time I Go on Vacation, Someone Dies is a cozy mystery about a murder that never happened. There are dual storylines about an actual murder and a fictional murder, but everything seems very low stakes since the murder hasn’t occurred. Nothing hooked me into getting invested in this story from the start.
There were a lot of characters who were meant to add to the “who done it” situation in the book. The characters were meant to carry the story because everyone had some “reason” to want Connor dead. There wasn’t a lot of information on the characters until the last third of the book, which kept me from getting invested in the story. My real problem with the book is that I didn’t care whether Connor died in IRL (in real life) or the book series. He wasn’t written as a likable character, and we knew very little about many of the characters until the middle-to-end of the book. Also, killing him off in the book series didn’t seem like that big of a deal, even if there was some financial gain for him; this just didn’t seem to hit as hard as the author wanted.
I also hated the footnotes in the book because they contained information needed to complete the story. Yes, they were extra information, but they helped fill in the details of many aspects of the book. Most of the funny moments in the book occurred in the footnotes. I likened this book to the Finlay Donovan series because it had the same vibes, but the humor wasn’t on the same level. This book started funny but lost its humor halfway through.
Reading this book took time because the plot didn’t pick up until halfway through. I understand that setup is essential, but I felt that for the first half of the book, nothing was “happening.” I became more interested in the budding relationship between Oliver and Eleanor than the murder in progress. Several times, I pleaded in my head to stop reading the book if Oliver was the killer. It wouldn’t have been fair because the relationship felt more high-stakes than anything else in the book.
My rating: 3 ⭐
Would I recommend it?
Yes. This book is an easy read and the first in the series. If you love a cozy mystery, I would recommend it. This is the first book in the series. The first book didn’t end in a situation where I needed to know what happened next or that something else would happen. But I would continue the series to see what happens next and who will be involved.
