Title: Murder Most Actual
Author: Alexis Hall
Genre: Cozy Mystery. LGBTQIA+
Source: Netgalley. I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Summary: When up-and-coming true-crime podcaster Liza and her corporate financier wife Hanna head to a luxurious hotel in the Scottish Highlands, they’re hoping for a chance to rekindle their marriage – not to find themselves trapped in the middle of an Agatha Christie-esque murder mystery with no way home. But who better to take on the case than someone whose entire profession relies on an obsession with all things mysterious and macabre? Though some of her fellow guests may consider her an interfering new media hack, Liza knows a thing or two about crime and – despite Hanna’s preference for waiting out the chaos behind a locked door – might be the only one capable of discovering the killer. As the bodies rack up and the stakes rise, can they save their marriage — and their lives?

My Thoughts:

This book was fun in a way I forgot that mystery books could be if that makes sense? It was cozy and the setting of a small, luxury boutique hotel nestled in the Scottish Highlands, cut off due to snow somehow seemed to raise the stakes.

Places of comfort being turned into crime scenes is a thing for me, but only in fiction.

The cast of characters (suspects) is ridiculous and I loved them all so much. They’re over the top in one of the best ways possible, reminding me of Clue and a lot of the classic mysteries.

Liza and Hanna were two characters that I loved but who frustrated me endlessly because I just wanted to beg them to talk and listen to each other without snapping or attacking the other. This book might be a mystery but at the heart of it is a relationship that might not yet be broken but is fractured and in need of some work.

To see two characters try to work together, when they’re not sure if they should still be together was good, and the admittance of wrongdoing between both of them was good to see.

This book was fun, and often outrageous, and I loved it.