I found it difficult to get into this book, all a bit too silly for me, and struggled to finish it. Therefore only one star from me.

I wasn't really impressed with this book. The characters are shallow without enough humour to offset that, and the whole thing feels like it's trying too hard to be classic murder mystery. I won't be reading any moe by this author.

See link below for the review published in Times Higher.

This was an entertaining murder, mystery amongst the towering spires of Oxford University. The descriptive writing was very funny with excellent depictions of the staff and students. The plot was quite complex and unravelled beautifully to the final conclusion. Great read.

Party Girls Die in Pearls is a high class whodunnit murder mystery. Ursula has just started at Oxford University and finds a dead girl in her first week. As she wan't to be part of the University Newspaper, Ursula must solve the mystery by her deadline Sunday. Alongside this she must make friends, socialise, work on her essay and take time to settle into Oxford.

I'm reading a lot of mysteries set around upper class schools recently, but Party Girls Die in Pearls far surpasses S.T.A.G.S. in my mind. Although I did figure it out before Ursula, it did take me a while to choose who the murderer was. But I was also slightly wrong. There's two people with very similar roles and I chose the wrong one. This kept me reading throughout the book.

I actually really disliked the American exchange student/best friend. It felt very forced and that she was there to show off outrageous fashion choices that every loves. Although Plum Sykes does have a background in fashion so it's understandably a focal point for her.

I enjoyed the footnotes as extra information as I didn't understand some things mentioned. But some made me feel slightly old. Such as explaining who Cyndi Lauper is? I'm sorry but I do not believe young teens do not know who she is. Also, the footnotes weren't placed properly on my ebook version, so I'd get a footnote before the text referencing it. But it may have been fixed in the published version, as I did get it as an ARC. Plus, of course it would be perfectly fine if you're purchasing a physical copy.

Although it's a murder mystery, there's a lot of exploration of the high life of Oxford students. It's extremely frivolous, with champagne and parties every night. But this contrasts nicely with the rather grisly death on campus. The characters were largely stereotypes although I feel like Sykes has pulled features and exaggerated them from people she knows. This is plausible as after searching, I found Sykes was a socialite and attended Oxford herself.

I would recommend Party Girls Die in Pearls to anyone who enjoys books similar to Sex in the City and Gossip Girl as well as mysteries.

If you're after some pure escapism, you could do a lot worse than taking a trip to 1980s Oxford with Ursula Flowerbutton and trying to solve a murder... Ursula is expecting Pimms, punting and parties at her first term at Oxford University but when a glamorous classmate is discovered with her throat slit on the first day of term, Ursula finds herself at the centre of a murder investigation. With the help of uber-fashionable American exchange student Nancy Feingold and uber-camp gossip columnist Horatio Bentley, who dresses almost exclusively in purple, Ursula navigates the snobby world of the champagne set, dodge romantic overtures from potential murderers and try to find the time to write her first essay. It's a little absurd, sure, but with a ridiculous(ly posh) cast of characters and some stellar pop culture references, this was a seriously enjoyable read for me. Think Jilly Cooper meets P.G. Wodehouse meets Cagney and Lacey. I mean, how can you resist?

It’s 1985 at Christchurch College, Oxford University, when ultra popular Yah-girl India is discovered dead, throat slit, in one of the professor’s rooms. Fresher Ursula lands the opportunity to write about the murder in the university newspaper, and sets out to solve the mystery behind India’s death. With help from fellow fresher, Nancy, and a vast array of eccentric side characters, Ursula digs her way to the bottom of the mystery.

The story is fun. It’s a very detailed murder mystery, but the writing style is quite clunky. It was also a bit too frivolous and frothy for me; I prefer my mysteries to have more grit. Although, there was some quite grizzly detail included about the murder and autopsy. The gruesome aspects being so completely surrounded by froth and glitter was quite confusing. Really, my main negative thought is that the book is too long. For me, it went on a bit and would have been more enjoyable if it was shorter. As it was, I struggled through to the end.

What I did like was the array of amusing characters. There are so many rich, posh and snobby characters, but they were all somehow different and likeable in their own ways. It felt a little like the book was written from the point of view of someone who has never been to public school or Oxford university (I actually don’t know if the author has or not, it’s just the vibe I get), so there are a lot of stereotypical posh characters who are obsessed with glamour and status. Which I found quite narrow-minded but enjoyable all the same.

The mystery aspect was excellent. I did guess (correctly) whodunit pretty early on but not how or why. This didn’t detract at all from the story; it was fun to work out the motives and methods alongside Ursula as the story progressed (and it was nice to find I was right all along).

Final note: although I liked the characters, it frustrated me immensely that no one was able to focus on the fact that their friend had been murdered. A girl turns up dead, and they’re all still obsessed with parties and clothes and dating. Your friend is DEAD and you can only manage to care for 5 minutes at a time.. uh HELLOOOO! What the hell?! But aside from that, good book.

I received a copy of the book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Thanks Bloomsbury Publishing Plc (UK & ANZ) and netgalley for this ARC.

Humor, glamour, and a girl finding her feet in the lost world of the 80's makes this a awesome murder mystery.

Mildly funny but very silly. Maybe it's just not for me, I found some parts a little dumbed down and a lot of it very silly - wasn't impressed unfortunately.

Ursula Flowerbutton (love the surname) was raised by her two grandmothers in a remote farm in the English countryside and when she enters Christminster College in Oxford, she is very excited to mingle with the aristocracy and attend parties. While her new American friend, Nancy, is interested in finding an earl to marry, Ursula dreams of becoming a journalist and wants to be part of the university’s newspaper. After she discovers the body of socialite Lady India, Ursula is asked to write about the murder for the newspaper. Since her article will be published only if she resolves the murder, Ursula turns into an English Nancy Drew and starts investigating with the help of her new friends, Nancy and Horatio. Between party invitations, dates, rowing lessons and history essays, Ursula discovers a world of secrets and scandal within the university.
Set in the 1980s, the author includes plenty of footnotes to explain the culture and fashion of the time. In this first book of a series (I can’t wait for the next one!), mystery and comedy go perfectly together. I loved the interesting and colourful cast of characters, the atmospheric setting of Oxford University, and the gripping and captivating plot that kept me glued to the page.

I enjoyed this book as a relatively easy read. However, there were a lot of footnotes throughout the book, explaining cultural references etc which detracted from the story at times.

The characters were fun, and the murder mystery element was enjoyable. I did guess who was involved, however, the reasons why we're not clear until the end.

Overall a great read if you are looking for something fun and not too complex. A great Summer holiday book.

I am going to start with the positive aspects of this book. It has a truly wonderful cover:






And the descriptions of clothes are hilarious and actually spot on – they sound unreal and exaggerated but I don’t think so:
A teensy-weensy, skin tight mini dress made of ruched, neon-yellow Lycra, fuchsia pink suede Maud Frizon stilettos and an enormous silver down jacket. 
She was dressed in a green bat-wing sweater, bubble-gum-pink pedal pushers, a trilby hat and white trainers. 
[She wore] a scarlet taffeta strapless mini dress printed with huge black polka dots… a fake-fur crimson stole… glitzy faux-ruby and diamond earrings… silver fishnet tights… red suede shoes. 
…gold pedal pushers, a sparkly green boob tube and lilac suede stilettos.










My friend Chrissie Poulson was inspired to discuss terrible clothes over at her blog recently - there’s a new book out where people show off their worst fashion choices – and the 1980s will always come up in any such listing. ***

Sadly the rest of the book doesn’t live up to this: Party Girls  is set at Oxford University in 1985, and deals with murder and mayhem among students, while apparently explaining the strange customs and morals of the university, and the British upper-classes, along the way. As a slapstick, unreal comedy it may work for some people. As a crime story it isn’t very good (when I first guessed who she was going to pin it on, I hoped I was wrong, for several reasons) and as a picture of life…. Well, one of my notes read ‘like Harry Potter only not so realistic, less rooted in fact.’  It's a complete fantasy world. 

And it’s just strange. Undergraduate Ursula wants to be a student journalist, and is also the person who discovered the body of a murdered woman. She is told by the editor of the top student paper, Cherwell, that she can only publish an article if she solves the murder. I personally am in a position (research) to tell you that the editor of Cherwell would not say this. Any editor would be grabbing Ursula with both hands because she has an eye-witness report. There were pound coins, not notes, at the time. The book has weird footnotes in an attempt root it in reality: but anyone who says Zuleika Dobson is the Edwardian Gone Girl, for example, gives the impression that she hasn’t read either of them.

I worry about the American reviews coming in that imply that you can actually learn what Oxford and the UK were like from this book…

But I did enjoy the fashion. And Plum Sykes is well-connected and will sell a shed-load of product and not care what I say about her book. (There is a blogpost on her earlier book, Bergdorf Blondes, here.)







I can recommend some other books about Oxford and Cambridge. (Cambridge was always less glittery, but it is the matching uni to Oxford. I was living in Cambridge in the mid-1980s, with wide-ranging university connections, which is one reason I feel able to criticize the picture this book presents.)

Antonia Fraser’s Oxford Blood (two blog entries!) is a terrific book: a murder story set exactly in 1985 Oxford, and a far more authentic picture of the time. ***

The above-mentioned Christine Poulson wrote a tremendous series of academic books set in Cambridge and featuring sleuth Cassandra James.

… And Chrissie and I also made lists of our favourite books with an academic setting.

This is a blogpost on Oxbridge-set books.

Murder at Cambridge by Q Patrick. Proving that I am not always that fussy, this is what I wrote about it:
It is a chirpy high-spirited book, with not much concern for the victims, a lot of old-fashioned detecting, and some excruciating dialogue. Most of the actions, discussions and motivations are totally unconvincing. The attitudes to women can easily be guessed.
NB: Those last three sentences are a test. Normal people read them as the anti-recommendation, while fans of Golden Age detective stories find them, inexplicably, a come-on, and are off looking the book up on Amazon.
All Souls by the marvellous Javer Marias.

Gaudy Night by Dorothy L Sayers.

--- and many more: click on the labels below if you are interested.

*** Talking of 80s fashion moments – when posting on clothes in Fraser’s Oxford Blood, I did say this:
Jemima’s assistant, Cherry, wears for work:
a pink cotton boiler-suit, many top buttons left untouched and a tight belt to clinch [should this be cinch?] her figure at the waist.
Nothing can be proved about how I know that this is not as unlikely as it sounds in a sensible, career-minded and professional person working in the media at that time.

Of course there was a huge difference – mine was jade green. I think Chrissie was pretty impressed (maybe jealous) when I told her about stomping through the 80s in this item with a shocking pink fun fur jacket slung over the top.

Pictures (need you ask?) from fashion magazines of the era…

I grew up in the 1980's, have a relative in first year at Oxford, love fashion and a good mystery. I am possible the target audience for this frothy retro school mystery. Read it for the clothing descriptions - an illustrated version would be grand!

Delightful but I felt all the cultural attitudes of rich girls vs. Scholarship girls, and titled fellows mix at big university just leaning on stuff we knew from Downton Abbey and a zillion other upstairs downstairs/class stories - with bits of 'Gossip GIrl' thrown in - perfectly harmless fun even though there's a murder (see how lightweight it seemed to me to be?) - but I know it's a popular theme and it's perhaps a bit too YA for me - but I am certain it will be successful - good for the beach!

Ursula Flowerbutton arrives at Oxford University's Christminster College for her first term studying ... well, murder as it turns out. Her fellow students are a mixed bunch with the most fabulous backgrounds and this makes it so much easier to follow the different suspects and bystanders. The workings of Oxford were a mystery to me, the many additional notes definitely of benefit. There was plenty of extra information which made it easier to picture the layout of where events took place.

I don't 'do' spoilers, but I am rather partial to a good mystery and this one is right up there with the best. Lots of doubts and reasoning, no shortage of suspects, and more than a few lies thrown in makes for great reading. I raced through it easily - always the sign of a well written whodunnit.

This is such an enjoyable novel. An excellently well-constructed mystery with terrific characterisation and the names were just a joy to read! I really hope that this is just the beginning of a long running series as I would love to read another! I have no doubt that this is a five star read.

I received an arc via Net Galley in exchange for my honest and unbiased review.

There has never been a piece of genre fiction that appealed more to me when I first heard about it, and Party Girls Die in Pearls certainly lived up to this promise. Despite some wild and wondrous fact-checking-required moments, Plum Sykes served up a mystery worth losing yourself in, whether you're in the same streets that our college girls parade down to pursue their investigation, or far far away. We're all, when we come to think of it, orphaned scholarship girls, as readers, and Ursula's cerebral perspective is a fantastic one from which to see 80s Oxford as in-the-know outsiders, with its aristocratic (and sometimes very recognizable), intellectual, and bohemian fun-lovers in whose circles the crime occurs, and its fascinating solution is uncovered.

Party Girls Die in Pearls is a fun murder mystery set amongst the parties, scandals, and scrapes of Oxford students in the 1980s. Ursula Flowerbutton is a middle-class girl from the countryside, brought up by her two grannies and looking forward to studying History and eating cucumber sandwiches when she goes to Oxford. However, her desire to get involved with the Cherwell, an Oxford student newspaper, becomes a reality when after an unexpected party invite, she comes across a dead body on her way to a tutorial. Suddenly, Ursula must spend her first week in Oxford on the trail of a murderer, assisted by her new American friend, and try to unravel all the love affairs, college jealousies, and high society secrets that she finds in her way.

Sykes’ narrative is a classic murder mystery, but the insight into the upper-class world of a certain subsection of Oxford students is what adds to the enjoyment, with witty and sometimes biting comments and descriptions giving a vivid picture of the world in which Ursula finds herself. Explanations of elements of slang amongst the rich and of Oxford traditions may seem a little odd to some, but it draws attention to the period nature of the setting whilst also holding up elements to ridicule. The characters are quite memorable, either in their poshness or eccentricity, and the style is light and straightforward, making it an easy read to devour in an afternoon.

The novel is full of references to both works involving Oxford (a footnote calls the TV adaptation of Brideshead Revisited the Downton Abbey of the 1980s except everyone was secretly gay) and 80s pop culture, with films and famous songs mentioned amongst the elite world. Like Starter For 10 and Stranger Things, Party Girls Die in Pearls mixes a genre story with a distinctive 1980s setting that will appeal to those who lived it and those who wish they could recreate the aesthetic of the time. Anyone who went to Oxford will also recognise details in the novel, many unchanged since the 80s.

A fabulous romp through '80s Oxford, with all of the ballgowns and champagne your heart could wish for an a rather ghastly murder in the middle. This is a tribute to the 'Bright Young Things' as seen through the lens of Hello! magazine, light-hearted fluff with an acerbic edge and a most enjoyable poolside read. I inhaled it in a single sitting.

Like an old fashion whodunit but with an aristocratic twist. Not the most exciting plot twist kinda book but it does keep you riveted and keeps you guessing who might be the murderer in this many character book. Plenty of larger than life characters and descriptions of bourgeois parties gleaned from Plum Syke's own experience in Oxford.

I loved this-it's a funny ,frothy tale of murder and mystery,with all the trappings of life for the privileged students of 1985 Oxford.I really look forward to the next in the series.Clearly the author knows lots about the traditions of the University which all add to the interest of the book.Perfect holiday reading!