I Only Read Murder by Will Ferguson and Ian Ferguson
Publication Date: February 27, 2024
Summary from NetGalley:
A once-famous TV sleuth
An amateur theater production
An onstage murder
A town full of suspects…
Miranda Abbott, once known for the crime-solving, karate-chopping church pastor she played on network television, has hit hard times. She’s facing ruin when a mysterious postcard arrives, summoning her to Happy Rock, a small town in the Pacific Northwest. But when she gets there, nothing is what she expected.
In dire straits, she signs up for an amateur production at the Happy Rock Little Theater. On opening night, one of the actors is murdered, live, in front of the audience. But no one actually saw what happened. Now everyone is under a cloud of suspicion, including the town doctor, the high school drama teacher, an oil-stained car mechanic, an elderly gentleman who may have been in the CIA—and Miranda herself.
Clearly, the only way to solve this mystery is for Miranda to summon her skills as television’s Pastor Fran. Because the show must go on!
ARC provided by Harlequin Trade via NetGalley for an honest review.
Confession:
Cozy mysteries don’t always work for me. I find them too predictable and the characters silly and annoying. But I decided to give this one a chance and although I initially hated this book and almost didn’t finish it, I was. in the end. glad that I decided to give it a second chance.
My main issue at the start of this book was how annoying Miranda was. She was just too self centered, completely ignorant of the feelings of those around her, and just didn’t seem to understand that her life wasn’t what she thought it should be. I am usually okay with not liking a main character, but Miranda just really had no redeeming qualities. Plus, there were no other characters in the story that I could latch onto and say, ok, I will keep reading because I like this one character. There really were no likable characters in this book, to start.
Miranda’s character does show some growth in this story, she becomes a little less self involved and at times is kind of charming. The other characters grew on me a bit as well, although they were a bit on the flat side and were mostly caricatures of small town quirky characters.
The overall plot and pacing was very slow. The actual murder doesn’t take place until well past the halfway mark. It was also pretty obvious who was going to be murdered and to be honest who did it as soon as we meet them. The motive for the murder was not as obvious but it was a bit ridiculous.
The other big issue that I really struggled with, mostly had to do with formatting. This too doesn’t usually bother me, especially when it is an ARC, but this was so poorly formatted that there were times when I couldn’t figure out who was talking until I read the passage two or three times. This was consistent throughout the whole book, so although some things got better this did not. I really hope it gets fixed before publication.
The second half of the book was so much better than the first. So much so, that at times it felt like a totally different book. There were even a couple of times towards the end that I chuckled a bit at something that someone said. I did like the way that Miranda went about trying to solve the murder, and some of the people she got to help her. The clues were all nicely laid out and even though totally predictable, was still well done.
So you might be asking yourself why did I end up finishing this book? Well, after taking a break from it, I decided to give it another chance and things did get better. Was it perfect? No. But it improved enough that I could see where other people who enjoy cozy mysteries might actually like this one. The second half also gave some glimmers on how good this series could be, if only a few things were tweaked here and there.
Confessions of a Serial Reader 