Blurb
In Hannah Dennison’s Murder at Honeychurch Hall, Kat Stanford is just days away from starting her dream antique business with her newly widowed mother Iris when she gets a huge shock. Iris has recklessly purchased a dilapidated carriage house at Honeychurch Hall, an isolated country estate located several hundred miles from London.
Yet it seems that Iris isn’t the only one with surprises at Honeychurch Hall. Behind the crumbling façade, the inhabitants of the stately mansion are a lively group of eccentrics to be sure—both upstairs and downstairs —and they all have more than their fair share of skeletons in the closet.
When the nanny goes missing, and Vera, the loyal housekeeper ends up dead in the grotto, suspicions abound. Throw in a feisty, octogenarian countess, a precocious seven year old who is obsessed with the famous fighter pilot called Biggles, and a treasure trove of antiques, and there is more than one motive for murder.
As Iris’s past comes back to haunt her, Kat realizes she hardly knows her mother at all. A when the bodies start piling up, it is up to Kat to unravel the tangled truth behind the murders at Honeychurch Hall.
My Perspective
This is the sixteenth book I read from my post Credit Where Credit’s Due. I read about Murder at Honeychurch Hall by Hannah Dennison from Ionia at Readful Things Blog. You can read her thoughts on the book here.
Murder at Honeychurch Hall follows Kat Stanford as she travels to country England to look after her mother who has just broken her wrist soon after buying and moving into the carriage house on the Honeychurch Estate. Soon Kat finds herself caught up in the estate and its mysteries, which somehow has something to do with her mother.
The first chapter of this book was rather abrupt and kind of threw you in the deep end. I found the dialogue between Kat and her mother quite annoying and so unfortunately the book and I got off to a bad start. I don’t know I’d say that it fully redeemed itself either.
Kat is a bit of your cliche female protagonist. She’s fairly smart, has a passion for something a little unusual that has brought her fame, has a striking feature (that is beautiful of course) and is in a relationship where she is SO OBVIOUSLY being played. I wouldn’t say I disliked her, she had a down to earth sort of charm that helped me to bear with her. I quite liked her mother, whom although was again a bit cliche, was enjoyable. Richard was vomit inducing and cliche – come to think of it most of the other characters were all fairly cliche too. Maybe that was the point and I totally missed it.
The story was fairly well written and held mystery however I didn’t find it super original. Usually that doesn’t bother me however the story wasn’t actually interesting enough to hold up all the cliches and typical “murder mystery” scenario, I think it fell quite flat.
Overall (as you can probably tell), I was quite disappointed in this story as the premise seemed like it was going to be a great “Whodunit” kind of novel and it really wasn’t. Not a terrible read however definitely not the next Agatha Christie.
Reading For The Masses 