A Cotswold Christmas Mystery

By: Rebecca Tope

Narrated by: Caroline Lennon

Length: 8 hrs and 35 mins

Publisher's summary

It’s Christmas, and things are looking good at the Slocombe house. Thea’s daughter Jessica has come to stay, much to her stepdaughter Stephanie’s delight. But then things take a turn for the worse. A local family, the Frowses, finds themselves increasingly harassed by an aggressive landlord.

When Beverley Frowse goes missing, Thea and Stephanie both feel they should do their best to help her husband and son to solve the mystery.

Christmas Day arrives. There are presents, a turkey and general goodwill, despite Thea’s suppressed hankering to be involved in events at the Frowses’ house, where a dead man has been discovered....

©2020 Rebecca Tope (P)2020 Soundings

Suspense

I love the whole mystery. How everyone was suspicious of the other. Good read over all

Don’t waste your money

Didn’t even get a third of the way through this book until I had to quit listening. Boring, hard to follow, total nonsense.

Not engaging

The story line appears engaging, yet lack flow, and the characters are not enjoyable to spend time with

Wish I hadn’t bothered.

I kept waiting for it to get good. And then it ended. The narrator made an heroic effort with the story, which was paltry. The detective is unlivable and is the sort who huffs about the amount of money other people spend on her step children’s presents and who resents any effort she must make to maintain familial relations (visiting her elderly mother in law in nursing home, putting on Christmas etc). Elements of backstory were missing that would have been useful. What happened to Drew’s first wife? An attack is obliquely mentioned and never explained. That was the most interesting thing in the book and, unless that was a bit I slept through, I never found out.

all over the place

I feel like I should make some sort of family tree to map out the cacophony of characters so that it would be actually possible to follow the story. Unfortunately that won't make them any more dimentional or likeable.

Not worth the time

This is a very convoluted story. I don’t recommend listening to it. Maybe another mystery would suit you better

Sadly boring

I listened to this because I love the Cotswolds and a good mystery. This was not good though. It was very hard to follow who they were talking about. Honestly, as I was listening to it I just kept wishing it was over with. The characters were not people you understood nor cared about. The narrator made everyone sound very similar to each other. And suddenly it was over without a very satisfying ending. Very dull indeed.