Interesting and full of fun twists, The Illhenny Murders is a thrilling quick read with a lot of reader satisfaction.

🏳️‍🌈👩‍❤️‍👩📚⚢🕵️‍♀️/👩‍⚕️👸👩‍❤️‍💋‍👩📖👭🏳️‍🌈

That’s in exchange of an honest review that I received an ARC of " The Illhenny Murders " by Winnie Frolik from NineStar Press (via NetGalley).
So, here it is !!!

My rating : 3 ⭐️

That’s my first time reading Winnie Frolik’s work. I like to read historical novels from time to time but, I love mysteries & WLW romances so, all those genres mixed in one book … it could only catch my attention !! Especially with a gorgeous cover like this …

I liked a lot the idea of the novel, the small English village settings, the vivid picturization of working caste and class differences in pre-WWII England … but, since I love to have my brain challenged, I found the mystery too light for my own taste (it was way too easy and to quick to find who was the brain – 😜 LMAO 😂🤣 – behind the bloody mess) … I found that the writing is quite good, though, and, here & there, there are some good lil touches of humour …

Some people might not like the fact that the WLW romance is, well, let’s say it, very light (with no explicit intimate scenes), but I appreciated it notheless ‘cause the story is, before anything else, a mystery and, we have to remember that the it occurs in the 30’s … Even if feminine homosexuality wasn’t neither recognized nor criminalized by law back then (unlike the masculine one) it wasn’t that common. And (maybe, it was way more problematic in the British society), Harriet and Mary come from two different classes … But, that’s true, I would have appreciated a slightly more thorough character development (especially about the Lovebirds)

Oh, one more thing: I loved Ahab the grumpy cat, lol. !!

If I had to make a very short and quite different version of my review, it’d be something like this :
- Did I enjoy this book? => Yes and no, an heavier mystery would have been nice.
- Did I find the characters believable? => Yes and no … they could have been more thoroughly developed.
- Is this book now included in my "must be re-read"-list? => I don’t think so. Unless the book is reworked …
- Will I purchase the paperback? => I don’t think so. Unless the book is reworked & the edited/extended version fits totally my taste
- Would I read another book by this author? => Yes because it remains a good discovery
- Would I recommend this book => I’ll let people use their free will to read the novel, or not …

🏳️‍🌈👩‍❤️‍👩📚⚢🕵️‍♀️/👩‍⚕️👸👩‍❤️‍💋‍👩📖👭🏳️‍🌈

I liked the idea: a cozy mystery starring a lesbian, no nonsense nurse set in the English countryside between the world wars. The problem was that district nurse Mary Grey is not in the last third of the book. And there was way too much head hopping, to the point where perspectives switched multiple times a page. I know it's not always that bad, but it made some of the reading choppy for me. Then there's the supposed romance - I don't need it to be explicit or have sex scenes all over the book, but I did not appreciate that the relationship between Harriot West and Mary was basically developed off page. It felt like as soon as they got closer the focus was shifted to Schaefer; almost as if he was the secret lead all along.

I was upset, because, while Mary didn't develop much, it would have been fun to see more of how she reacted to the situations that Schaefer was in. Harriot West, the sister of the unfortunately passed Anthony West would have been an interesting character, given that she was in a loveless marriage relationship with a not so great human, and her own beloved brother was dead. Mary was driven to find the killer of the stranger she saved, partially because she felt obliged to help, but also because she saw how it affected Harriot. Once they were taken out of the picture, Schaefer's role felt flat and detached. Almost all the air went out of the book for me.

I have read lesbian cozy mysteries. While some were a little silly, I enjoyed the ride with them for the most part. I am just disappointed that this one did not work for me.

This was an okay story. I love a mystery, and because this was a WLW romance mixed with some historic fiction, I was excited to read this. Unfortunately, I never really felt like I got that absorbed in the story. The story was readable and the book kept my attention, but I like my mysteries to be more gripping.

It’s funny but I read a review that stated that this was like a cozy mystery, but had an overly graphic description of a dead body, and graphic WLW love scenes that were jarring. I must admit, after reading that I was excited for a good mystery with some steamy sex scenes. You can imagine my disappointment when I realized that there weren’t any explicit sex scenes. The only thing that even came close is one of the main characters sharing a memory of being a young woman and learning about her body and another young woman’s body… “At first, they stayed on the top half…. territory in the nether regions was explored as well.” “…they made their way, learning all kinds of things that can be done with fingers and tongues.” That’s it. That was all I could find, so I guess I somehow got the vanilla, non-explicit version :( However, I will say that yes, there was an overly graphic description of a dead body, including smell, that didn’t fit the rest of the “cozy” feel.

I love mysteries and the act of trying to solve the crime before the authors let us know ‘who did it’. While I always hope to be right in my guess, I don’t want it to be easy. Unfortunately, I found the killer to be too easy to guess. The book was not even a quarter of the way done and I already knew what was going on. And the problem with that is that the other storylines were not on the level needed to carry the rest of the book.

There is a lite WLW romance, but it is very lite. The characters are apart too much and just when your interest starts to be piqued, the story switches to other characters. This leads me to a story choice I didn’t care for. While the first part of the book is about a woman becoming an amateur detective, her storyline becomes very small all of a sudden when a real detective enters the story midway. The book ends up being in 3 or 4 POV’s and I just felt like it was too spread out. I just couldn’t connect to any of the characters since they would go in and out of the story.

In the end this story is fine. The writing is decent and the book reads well. The problem I had was with the story choices because it stopped me from connecting with the characters. On top of that, the mystery just seemed too easy. It had some potential, with certain points being well thought out, but on a whole it wasn’t quite there for my personal tastes.

I think this book works best as a cozy mystery. If the author sticks with the cozy mystery theme, she might actually be able to build a series around Mary Grey and Detective Shaefer.

Unfortunately, the book falters when it loses sight of the cozy mystery theme and gets graphic. I understand that it's billed as a LGBTQ+ book, too, but the graphic love scenes at the beginning are jarring. The sweet will-they-or-won't-they romantic scenes with Harriet later on in the book are much more appropriate for this story. In addition, the graphic descriptions of the second body also seem inappropriate.

The author's writing is very descriptive and I liked a number of the characters, most notably Harriet and Schaefer. If this book does become a series, I'd like to see these characters return. But I'd suggest narrowing the storyline, removing the graphic images, and doing some editing.

This really could be a nice mystery series set in the 1930's in England with a Nurse and a former German policeman as the primary investigators, and a motley crew of characters including an heiress and various other townspeople assisting them.