I came for the murder mystery and left wanting to move into a retirement village - the characters stole the show, even when the plot wandered off without me. Final Score: 3.75

What This Book Did Well The characters were the main standout for me, full stop. I loved the background and the full story around each of the main cast, and I loved that they weren’t just written in as the helpless elderly side characters - the only time they were depicted that way was when they were manipulating someone into giving them what they wanted, and I loved that! They each had rich backstories that were alluded to instead of info-dumping their background. Getting little glimpses of their history rather than a full data dump felt very well crafted.

The humor worked too, even if I wouldn’t go as far as laugh out loud funny. It’s very punchy, and some of the wording was really clever in a genuinely humorous way. I can see exactly how this became a sitcom with how it’s written.

I also loved the commentary on the justice system versus vigilante justice - watching how the legal system can be unfair and seeing people try to figure out how to navigate that was easily one of the more interesting threads for me.

Audiobook Experience This is where my recommendation comes with an asterisk. The voice actor did a good job and I think part of the punchiness of this book can be attributed to the narrator. It’s somewhat hard for me to untangle whether the humor just worked on its own or whether it worked better with the narrator’s style.

That said, only some of the characters had distinct voices for me, which made telling them apart a lot harder in audio form. Pair that with frequent POV changes and it got genuinely confusing at points. The cast I loved so much kind of blurred together, and if I hadn’t had a physical copy alongside it, I think I would have gotten really lost so I don’t know if I would have wanted to do this as an audiobook alone personally. This might have been a book better served with multiple narrators.

Where It May Fall Short Once you get into the plot, things start to fall apart a bit. The biggest thing for me was the sheer number of characters - there were too many for me to keep track of, and outside of the main cast it felt like we just kept adding more and more people and convoluting things. The more people got added near the end, the more confused I got.

While I always appreciate when I can’t predict the ending - I think it went too far here. It started to feel like side characters were being added or highlighted near the end as red herrings to throw me off. That’s not an issue, but there were so many that it really dragged the ending out for me and by the end I kept thinking “Okay, is this the ending or are we going to just keep going?”.

This is more of a me-thing, but as someone who has consumed a lot of British media over the years, I did not catch almost any of the British references in this book. They’re not critical at all, so if you know them, they’re a nice sprinkle on top, but I’ll be honest I was a touch annoyed that I didn’t know what people were referencing. Not a big deal, but I wanted to note it.

Final Thoughts, Opinions & Recommendations As someone who just hit their mid-30’s, I’m a little scared at how much I related to each of these elderly characters or wanted to be them (hi, Elizabeth). If I could move to their retirement village I would in a heartbeat!!

This is for readers who pick up a cozy mystery for the people first and puzzle second - if you fall hard for a great ensemble cast, you’ll have a wonderful time here! You might not have as good of a time you like tight, easy to follow mystery plots, or anyone planning on audio without a physical copy nearby. The mystery gets tangled and the cast is big.

The bingeability is a funny gray area for me. It feels bingeable except that the plot got complicated enough that it actually wasn’t bingeable for me. So it lives somewhere in between.

If you liked Killers of a Certain Age by Deanna Raybourn or The Marigold Cottages Murder Collective by Jo Nichols, I think you would find a lot to love here! I haven’t seen The Thursday Murder Club TV show, but this also reminded me a lot of Only Murders in the Building.

My thanks to whoever donated their copy to my favorite thrift store just in time for my bookclub AND to my local public library for having the audiobook available! GO SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL PUBLIC LIBRARY!! They are the real MVPs!

TL;DR Would I Recommend it? Yeah - but I’m not shoving this one in people’s hands exactly. Would I Reread it? Maybe, but unlikely Would I Continue the Series/Read More From This Author? I think so but strictly for the characters, if the plots keep being really complicated and dragged out I don’t think I would want to keep going. As for the author outside of this series - I would give another book by them a shot too to see how it stands up.

Star Score Breakdown Personal Enjoyment: 3.75 Overall Execution: 3.5 Craft & Writing Quality: 3.75 Characters: 4.75 Plot: 3 Final Score: 3.75