Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone: A Novel (The Ernest Cunningham Mysteries, 1)

Dysfunctional family novel at its finest! Took me a short while to get my head round who is who but after a few chapters I was hooked. Loved the history of the family mixing in with the present, along with the setting being random but pefect. Thought I had sussed it, I had not multiple times. 🤦‍♀️ The chatty writing style was a refreshing change to other ‘who done it’ novels, kinda felt like you were sat with Ernest hearing it first hand. Would recommend for sure.

What I liked: A spoof on Agatha Christie. A whodunnit where a dysfunctional family gathers for a reunion at a mountain resort, snowstorm, & multiple character deaths. What I Disliked: The narrator became distracting by repeatedly breaking the 4th wall and interrupting the flow by saying "you're only 60% through the story" or "you'll find that at page" and “I am going to tell you exactly what's going to happen".

A fun read. No heavy lifting. The narrator is a writer of “”how to write” books. Self published online “how to write a mystery novel”. The story takes place at a ski lodge. Every family member has a chapter, that uncovers who they’ve killed or almost killed. Interspersed are the key rules of mystery riding, as laid out by a 1930s author, a little little tongue, and cheek.

Well written and hilarious! I would categorize this as a cozy murder mystery. Yes, apparently this is a thing. The story takes place at a ski resort, and is the perfect read for cozy fall weather. The author incorporated a murder mystery brilliantly. Very fun read!

Dark, witty, challenging and compelling. I co-read with the audiobook and at times I found the audiobook made things too confusing with all the details, comments and side notes the author includes in the narrative. Likewise, Ern can become annoying if you read this book in a short sitting like I did. With that said, I found the story interesting and compelling enough to power through. And I would be interested in reading the second book in this series. Being familiar with a number of how to write a mystery rules, there were a few things I could pick up on and guess. But it was nice to know that even if I guessed correctly about some of those things, it did not ruin the book or the overall mystery for me. This book holds a lot of humor and it was darker than I believe I was anticipating. The big twists in the narrative were shocking but not so shocking that they were unbelievable or too superfluous. It would take a member of this crazy family to stick through all this nonsense because if it were me, I would have gracefully bowed out.