Happy Monday bookish people! I hope you’re all having a good day today. I am bringing you my boo review for the new cosy mystery novel This Is Not A Game by Kelly Mullin.
Synopsis/Blurb:
A unique locked-room debut with a memorable intergenerational relationship and gaming angle, about a grandmother and granddaughter who are snowed in at a lavish party at a mansion where the host has been murdered, and the unlikely sleuthing pair must draw on a unique skillset to navigate a dangerous game together
Widow Mimi lives on idyllic Mackinac Island where cars are not allowed and a Gibson with three onions at the witching hour is compulsory. Her granddaughter, Addie, is getting over the heartbreak of her fiancé, Brian, dumping her and cutting her out of the deal for the brilliantly successful video game, Murderscape, they invented together (with Addie doing most of the heavy lifting).
When Mimi gets an invitation from local socialite Jane Ireland–a seventysomething narcissist who is having an affair with her son-in-law–to a charity auction, it is the perfect excuse to get Addie to join her for the weekend. What Mimi isn’t telling Addie is that a blackmail threat from Jane looms over the party’s invitation.
In case the scene wasn’t already set for a turbulent weekend, a big storm rolls in, trapping everyone in the mansion. And then, Jane’s body is found. Soon Mimi and Addie are caught in a dangerous game, relying on their skills (Mimi loves a crossword puzzle, and Addie is a brilliant game designer, after all) to narrow down the suspects. When another body turns up, the sleuthing pair realize someone else is playing a deadly game, and they might not survive the night. . . .
My review:
Okay, so I will start by saying that I read this book as a potential case study for my PhD thesis and because of that I didn’t set out to necessarily enjoy it, I read it to disect the use of technology in a cosy mystery and on that aspect I will say immediately, it was forced. There were random mentions of tech that didn’t fit with any other part of the novel it was just there to say they’d used it and as far as Addie’s murder mystery game, it got very repetitive and annoying being mentioned every five minutes.
In terms of the actual mystery I think it was okay, nothing boundary breaking, but a good enough read to keep my attention but I found the characters lacking and a little unbelievable. I found that the suspects were very quickly spoken to and revealed their secrets too easily to hook a reader.
Have you read this book? What did you think of it?
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