Audiobook Review - Mother Daughter Murder Night

Let’s start the blogging new year with one of the rare audiobooks I listened to over the December period (I would have listened to more, but I was made redundant and it effected my reading and audiobooking more than I realised). Now, this one I bought and I started this, thinking it would be one thing but it turned into another. 

Title and Author: Mother Daughter Murder Night by Nina Simon

Publisher: HarperCollins

Bought, Borrowed or Gifted: Audiobook Purchased

Buy From (Affiliate): uk.bookshop.org

Lana Rubicon is a high-powered businesswoman with lots of be proud of. But when she faints one morning and discovers that she has cancer, Lana is forced to live her with estranged daughter, Beth, and her granddaughter, Jack. 

When Beth discovers a body while kayaking one morning, one of the male lead detectives believes she is a prime suspect, much to Lana’s furious. While Beth wants Lana to recover and stay out of it, Lana can’t. She doesn’t trust the Police, even though the female lead detective seems to have a good head on her shoulders. Lana decides to look into the case herself and prove Jack’s innocence - even if that means putting on a wig and leaving the house for the the first time in months. 

Soon, all three Rubicon women are looking into the murder. Butt can a murder really bring these three very different women together? And will they catch the killer?

I am going to be honest. I saw this randomly on Instagram and I went “Ooooh” when I listened to the Audible sampler. But what I got was so different to what I was expecting. 

I knew this was going to be a light murder mystery, but this book has its foot very firmly in cosy mystery. But there were times I felt that the book couldn’t decided if it wanted to a literary fiction, looking into the complex relationships between mothers and daughters. 

Also, I wasn’t the biggest fan of the pacing - in both the writing and in the audiobook’s narration. With the audiobook narrator, you can up the speed and, once I got to the certain point, I did up the reading speed. With the writing, its biggest fault is at the start. It was very slow and as someone going into this for the murder, I found the domestic insights of the three characters hard going at the start. 

But, once the pacing picked up (around the 35/40% mark), the leads of Lana, Beth and Jack really helped drive the story forward. And yes, this helps the murder mystery as I do like some pacing in my mystery reading. 

If you fancy a cosy read that focuses on family drama and a dash of murder, this might be the read for you. But be aware on the story’s pacing…