Review by Booklist Review
In this sequel to Every Time I Go on Vacation, Someone Dies (2024), author Catherine Mack brings back 35-year-old mystery writer Eleanor Dash, who is involved in another murder just months after the end of the first book. The setting? Santa Catalina Island, where the two lead actors of When in Rome, the movie based off of Eleanor's successful mystery series, are having their the secret Hollywood wedding. The leads? Eleanor's childhood best friend, Emma Wood, and Fred Winter, a big-time movie star. When members of the wedding staff and of the film cast start coming up dead, Eleanor is tasked with trying to solve the mystery while worrying this is all because of her, again! Eleanor continues to be a sarcastic narrator who uses footnotes to speak to the reader. The novel is again full of pop references, romance, and a mix of suspects. It is an easy read that will keep you interested enough to find out who did it, but if you are looking for deep, complex characters, this is not the series for you.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Mack's fast and funny sequel to Every Time I Go on Vacation, Someone Dies finds bestselling mystery author Eleanor Dash in California, where the film adaptation of her first novel, When in Rome, is being shot. The stars are Eleanor's childhood best friend, Emma Wood, and Emma's fiancé, Hollywood heartthrob Fred Winter. After filming wraps, the cast heads to Catalina Island to celebrate Fred and Emma's wedding. While severe weather threatens to thrash the coast of California, Eleanor privately frets about an anonymous note she received promising that someone will die during the nuptials. All goes well at the ceremony, but during the reception, Eleanor discovers a dead body with a cake knife sticking out of its back while searching for a bathroom. Equal parts horrified and exasperated, she launches an inquiry into the killing and digs up some uncomfortable truths about the people closest to her. Mack complements the twisty plot with Eleanor's brisk and biting first-person narration, chock-full of amusing asides (often in footnotes) that examine the movie business and the craft of mystery writing. This one goes down smooth. (May)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A threatening note sends a mystery writer into investigative mode to protect those closest to her from danger. Clever thinking and a knack for storytelling make author Eleanor Dash the perfect fit for her job. Well, that and her ability to write from her own life experience, which is quite a robust source of information. Sometimes too robust, as she finds while on the set of the movie adaptation of her novelWhen in Rome. Eleanor is thrilled that her longtime best friend, Emma Wood, will be playing the film's lead opposite big-time movie star Fred Winter. The Catalina Island setting is remote and romantic, the perfect place for Emma and Fred to fall in love for real. In the wake of a preproduction fling turned serious, the two are surprising their colleagues and friends with a post-wrap wedding. The filming of Eleanor's first novel awakens all sorts of personal memories of roguish playboy Connor Smith, the simultaneous hero and villain of her Vacation Mysteries series and her real life. Though her boyfriend, Oliver Forrest, is otherwise secure, seeing Connor show up in the flesh as the filming ends is a bit of a trigger. A bigger trigger is a vague anonymous note announcing that "someone is going to die at the wedding." Eleanor switches into problem-solving mode, but she can't do much to prevent the murders from piling up. Can she find the killer, or will her nearest and dearest be at risk? Sometimes smart writing can be too clever to be something more. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
