• Author: Daisy Waugh
• Series: Standalone
• No. of pages: Not specified on Goodreads.
• Publisher: Little Brown Book Group/Piatkus
• Dates read: 06.02.20 – 08.02.20
• Rating: DNF (Standard 2 stars)

Synopsis: Sir Ecgbert Tode of Tode Hall has survived to a grand old age – much to the despair of his younger wife, Emma. But at ninety-three he has, at last, shuffled off the mortal coil. Emma, Lady Tode, thoroughly fed up with being a dutiful Lady of the Manor, wants to leave the country to spend her remaining years in Capri. Unfortunately her three tiresome children are either unwilling or unable (too mad, too lefty or too happy in Australia) to take on management of their large and important home, so the mantle passes to a distant relative and his glamorous wife. Not long after the new owners take over, Lady Tode is found dead in the mausoleum. Accident? Or is there more going on behind the scenes of Tode Hall than an outsider would ever guess….?

I have to be honest. I am normally find DNFing books. But it’s feels weird to DNF a book that is an ARC. But I have to be honest.

First of I would like to say that this is definitely a book written for a different audience than myself. It seemed to be more for older women, not that that is a problem at all. It just wasn’t really something that I would read or felt was written for me based on the sentences and language used. Which is fine but this is probably why I struggled with it.

Personally, I felt the writing told you too much information right away. I felt since it’s a murder mystery you have to learn these things as you go, not straight away. This made it hard as some of the stuff being said would feel like big things to be revealed so early on. E.g. A man was cheating on his wife with other men, something which I felt should have been brought up later but was mentioned 5 minutes into the story. Obviously, I didn’t read to the end, so my hope is there was pay off to that comment, else why mention it.

There just seemed to be too much info dumping about random things and because I didn’t finish the book, my hope is that it is all relevant to the story.

I couldn’t connect to the characters; they all came of unlikable and I didn’t want to read more about them. Also, they all seemed to have such similar names like Egbert and Ecgbert, so I found it difficult to differentiate who was who which made reading a struggle.

Sadly, this just didn’t work for me. I think the writing style which included a lot of info-dumping and telling not showing just made me not want to continue.