Thank you to NetGalley and Inkshares for the egalley! This sounded so promising and I was initially so intrigued, however I found myself bored. I assumed the siblings would race to out-sleuth the other in order to solve the mystery of their father’s murder, instead, they become wrapped up in old dark secrets, which would be interesting if there hadn’t been a murder. I wanted to like this so much more than I did. I appreciate the opportunity to read and review ahead of the publishing date.

This was unexpectedly pretty good with an amazing plot twist at the end. The blurb had seemed so unassuming and typical of a murder mystery, but the book was an absolute page-turner all throughout as the layers of the mystery are gradually unpeeled. Not in the sense of a thriller, but in the sense that our main characters continue to discover many new pieces of information but not much seems to be making sense in the way of solving the crime and more questions keep popping up.

The book features three main characters: Alan, Roger, and Caroline, the adopted children of Sir Lawrence Linwood. Under his care, they were given an excellent but cutthroat education courtesy of their ruthlessly ambitious father, who instilled in them that nothing should stop them in their journey to the top. Each having gone their own paths, they once again return to their childhood home for the funeral of their father, who was murdered. However, when his will was read, they were all given a huge surprise: whoever among the three finds his killer will obtain the entire Linwood estate.

It sounds standard, but it's darker than you would expect. It's a deep pit. And as the mystery unfurls, we get to know each of the Linwood children better through the different perspectives, as well as the pervasive presence of Sir Linwood in their formative years and in the entire area like a local overlord. We see them trying to shake off their father's looming shadow, which continues to have a strong hold over them even though he's already dead. In addition, alongside the three siblings is Iris, Roger's fiancee who accompanied him to the funeral, and she basically serves as the main outsider perspective in this sordid affair. All in all, pretty mind-boggling, especially when the pieces began falling into place at the end.

Thank you to Netgalley and Inkshares for providing me with a free electronic copy of this book.

As this story opened I expected to read about sibling rivalry, between brothers, (First Born versus second), (between brothers and their sister, as in men count and woman don't.) , but was instead drawn into issues concerning adoption, bullying and family dynamics that kept me reading and reading. I looking for more from this author.

I really liked this book. The characters are well thought out and come to life through Huang's words. I always enjoy a good mystery that is told from multiple points of view and this one did not disappoint. There were interesting secondary characters that jumped right off the page. I really enjoyed the story and the arc of the plot. I recommend this book for mystery readers.

The premise for this book was very intriguing to me, and I regret that I let it sit on my shelf for so long before reading it! I think I may have had a better experience reading it at the time I first heard about it, but that is not how it went. I found this book to be lackluster. The setting and the characters are all interesting in theory, but in practice they became muddled and flat.

The women in this book were props, no personality to speak of from Caroline or Iris, while we got pages and pages of war flashbacks from Roger which didn’t add enough to the story to justify their inclusion. Every flashback seemed to slam the brakes on the present day story, and often that would be where I set the book down for a few days, having lost all momentum.

I thought the premise of this book was excellent and I would be interested in reading future work by Huang, I think there is certainly the possibility of improvement!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher, Inkshares, for providing me with a copy of the book in exchange for this honest review!!

Thanks to Inkshares, Netgalley and the author for an ARC of this book. I am leaving this unbiased review voluntarily.

I haven't read anything by this author before but I am going to rectify that soon. This was an absolutely cracking mystery with a hint of Agatha Christie (post WWI) and some modern twisty turns that I just did not see coming.

I really can't say much about the story without giving too much away, but adopted siblings Alan, Roger and Caroline are charged with finding their father's killer in order to inherit his vast wealth and estate. There are some other brilliant characters in this (Iris stole my heart immediately) and, of course, the villain is extremely villainous.

The language and floe of writing puts the reader right into 1920's post-war England, at a time where science and innovation was at its height, with perhaps, less monitoring than there should have been (parallels can be drawn to modern times) but that is all I am going to say!

This is too clever a mystery for you to miss out on! Highly recommended.

For me personally this book was quite difficult to read and it took me quite long to do that but I'm very glad I finished it and got to enjoy the beautiful ending. And on the whole everything in this story was great - the setting, the characters, the pace, the twists... everything.

The main mystery element is quite classic - the head of the family death followed by sophisticated investigation. But the way each of the main charactes is finding out about their own origin and how their father's urge for control has influenced them throughout their lives is what's truly interesting here. At least it was so for me while I was reading this book, so I think I'll definitely recommend it to those who love family mysteries with good character development.

Christopher Huang has a distinct knack for crafting mysteries set in classic manor house style, and Unnatural Ends does not disappoint.

In the trope of -who will be the victim's heir- three adopted siblings must find their father's killer. As they investigate, Alan, Roger, and Caroline grapple with their places within the family dynamic, how each came to be adopted, and what lessons they've learned tfrom their father.

Sounds basic, right? Add in some post-Edwardian values, villagers pulling on their forelocks, many more murders, motherhood, honor, gaslighting, cunning and ruthlessness, and an intricate plot.

It's a must read, as is Huang's debut novel, A Gentleman's Murder.

Unnatural Ends is a mystery set in 1921 after the death of Sir Lawrence Linwood. When his three adopted children come home for the funeral, they learn that their father was brutally murdered. And according to his will, the one who can solve the crime will inherit his estate. Throughout the book, we discover Sir Lawrence Linwood’s dark, manipulative history and how that affects his children. An interesting premise, but I felt like it was 100 pages too long.

This was almost a DNF for me. The beginning was so slow but at around 25-30% it got better. If you’re going into this thinking it’s a cozy historical mystery be warned it is actually, surprisingly extremely dark. There’s child abuse, spousal abuse, animal abuse, eugenics, and more.

What I liked: the setting of Linwood Hall and Linwood Hollow, the time period felt very authentic, and the overall mystery of the story.

What I did not like: pretty much all of the characters, the 3 Linwood children were not very likable in my opinion. And their father, I’m shocked nobody tried to kill him long before this.

Thanks to the publisher, author, and NetGalley for the e-arc I received in exchange for my honest review.

i was so bored. So bored and I really wanted to love this book.

I felt the characters were a snorefest and I had to push myself to finish it and it didn't get better.

It sounded so great but it was bland :( I'm sorry!

Canadian author Christopher Huang’s new crime caper might not have the brutal one-liners of Succession, but it does have an unscrupulous patriarch who takes pleasure in manipulating and pitting his three children against one another – even after his death.

April 1921: Sir Lawrence Linwood has been violently bludgeoned to death in his study, presumably by someone he knows. His untimely death brings his three adopted children back home where they’re met with an unexpected request in their father’s will. An unorthodox clause states that, in the case of his unnatural death, the child who finds his killer will inherit his estate.

Read the rest of the review here: https://westwordsreviews.wordpress.com/2023/06/23/unnatural-ends-christopher-huang/

3.5/5

The book is promising but fell short for me. Don’t get me wrong I still liked it, especially the family dynamics. I wish there was more of that and not the mystery. The ending was cool as hell too.

Tangled lives meet tangled plot. While the ending was satisfying it was messy to get there. Thanks to #NetGalley and #UnnaturalEnds for advanced digital copy.

So many layers to this tale!

This was the first book by Christopher Huang that I have read; granted his first book caught my eye with its cover. That is in the TBR pile now!

I was a little bit intimidated when I saw that this was 450 pages, but it flew by. I just had to keep going to the next page to see what else unfolded. I had my theories, but not all were correct.

What’s fun is getting the different perspectives. It helped to put all the pieces together (like the cover of the book). This book is like a giant onion: you have to peel away a lot of layers to get to the center. I had a mental mind map of things going on as it unraveled, but felt like I was playing one of those games where you solve the crime and have pieces of evidence spread out on a table to reflect upon.

The other thing that I really enjoyed about this book was how descriptive it was. It was set in the early 1900’s and I felt like I was there; with the way that a car was described, or a wall/floor, scent of a cigarette - it was so easy to escape my reality and jump into the setting of this book.

Thank you so much to the author, Christopher Huang, Inkshares and NetGalley for this eARC of Unnatural Ends in exchange for my review!

I received a complimentary ARC copy of Unnatural Ends by Christopher Huang from Net Galley & Inkshares in order to read and give an honest review.

… a slow burning, complex, dark psychological mystery set in the perfect stormy moors of a Yorkshire estate. With multiple suspects, and even more motives, Huang crafted a clever, well-written and satisfying read that I would recommend for those who enjoy unique historical mysteries with a twist…

In 1921 Linwood Hall towers over the Yorkshire moors and the tiny village of Linwood Hollow as does the legacy of the family who resides there. As Alan, Roger and Caroline, the adopted children of Sir Lawrence Linwood and his wife return home to bury their father, they reminisce about how driven their father was to craft them into perfect adults with perfect lives.

Linwood Hall’s fate lies in the reading of Sir Lawrence’s will which states should Sir Lawrence die of natural causes, Linwood Hall is to be placed on market and the proceeds to be divided between the three children effectively breaking with the legacy of Linwood remaining in the family. The only caveat would be if his death were due to unnatural causes then Linwood Hall and the entire estate will go to the child who solves his murder. Beaten to death in his study with rumors circulating of a missing will with changes awarding everything to one child, Alan, Roger, and Caroline have not only a mission but are also suspects in the murder investigation. The deeper the three delve into solving the murder the closer they become, the more secrets they uncover the more they realize how toxic their childhood had been and to what lengths their father would go for perfection.

Although not a quick read I really enjoyed it, a slow burning, complex, dark psychological mystery set in the perfect stormy moors of a Yorkshire estate. With multiple suspects, and even more motives, Huang crafted a clever, well-written and satisfying read that I would recommend for those who enjoy unique historical mysteries with a twist.

This might be called a neo-classical locked room mystery. It concerns the rich family in the estate on the hill and the efforts of the three children of the family to find who killed their father. There are many many twists, turns, revelations and encounters with plenty of characters as one would expect. It's the kind of plot that you can figure out parts, but not how they work together until the end. It's well written, but for me it goes on too long and got boring. There are allusions to cruelty that, had I been aware of prior, would have keep me from reading this. They are brief and not explicit.

This is only the author’s second published novel, but the writing is so polished and the plotting so on point, that, other than a slightly slow start and a minor weakness around the final climax, one could easily think there’s a long backlist already.

The story is narrated in third person past tense, and mostly from the deep point of view of the three adopted adult children of Sir Lawrence Linwood, with the principal timeline taking place in April 1921; however, there’s quite a bit of time shifting, as each of the three are forced to re-examine the past in light of the present.

The blurb is very good; its brevity in setting the stage makes it all more intriguing.

Excellent use of the prologue, set almost two decades before the murder; it introduces the three Linwood siblings. At first glance, it all seems natural enough: three young children stuck in a old, rambling English pile, surrounded mostly by adults, and therefore looking for ways to entertain themselves and each other, bonding like most siblings do, especially those so close in age (there’s only three years between Alan, the oldest, and Caroline, the youngest).

In sum, it creates the impression of well adjusted children who trust and love each other.

However, a growing sense of dark foreboding soon replaces that of normalcy.

For example, there’s this:

“Alan found himself thinking first that he should grieve, but he didn’t feel it. Then he thought he should feel relief, but again he felt nothing of the sort.”

And one starts to get a proper idea of just how nothing is what it seems at Linwood Hall.

The alternating deep point of view is great for characterization; even when each of the three siblings look at the same things, their personalities come through to slant the view just so. And yet, they all in turn focus on “Father’s study”; they all feel his eyes on them, even knowing he’s dead, and they all dread his disapproval.

I am going to gloss over the plot, because I don’t want to spoil future readers; it’s basically a lot of clues dropped all through the text, with twist upon twist upon twist. As the three siblings work to try to fulfill their father’s last request–to solve his murder–long standing secrets are revealed, and more questions arise; the obvious answers are obviously wrong, except when they aren’t–and even then, not in obvious ways or for obvious reasons.

However, I will talk about content warnings. There’s a lot of casual racism, a lot of sexism–if not outright misogyny–and of course, being set so close after World War I, PTSD makes an appearance–all three Linwood siblings served. As the narrative moves on, we start to realize that while they each have compartmentalized the trauma in different ways, they all also have repressed memories–beware recounting of childhood abuse, both physical and emotional.

This all is explored in the flashbacks, and generally bears fruit sooner or later in the present.

The setting is very well drawn; very English, one would say, and yet, there’s also something obviously not quite-quite at Linwood Hall and in Linwood Hollow; there is something more, exaggerated–indeed, unnatural–in the village-lord relationship.

I mentioned above that the start is a bit slow; the book is structured in four parts, with sections named after the point of view character rather than numbered chapters. After the siblings arrival, the author sticks with Alan’s point of view a bit too long for my taste. When the point of view changes more frequently, the story moves forward at an ever accelerating pace, and by the time we are about 45% into the story, we are racing recklessly forward.

And, as the story progresses, the layers of manipulation and control imposed on the three Linwood siblings start to peel off; being adults away from their father has helped them heal. As they work to find out who murdered them man who abused them so, their true personalities reassert themselves. Alan, methodical in his thinking, also observant; Roger, the one who forges ahead and jumps to (often accurate) conclusions, and Caroline, the one who can put herself on other people’s shoes and intuit what they would do–and why. All caring for each other, a team rather than three isolated units.

The characterizations are consistent, and there’s real growth for our three protagonists; the secondary characters, even those only seen through other people’s eyes, are well rendered, and generally three dimensional.

The writing can be quite funny, which helps counterbalance some very dark moments.

“Sister Richard was its head wardress…its headmistress. Hers was the pipe organ voice that had impressed Caroline with its sonorous grandeur when they spoke over the telephone two days ago, but the woman herself was a diminutive little dumpling with the face of a rosy-cheeked cherub” (Caroline’s POV, somewhere around 41%)

“Within the space of those six scant hours, behind the locked doors of the inn and with a police guard mounted over his bed, Edwin Culpepper had somehow contrived to get himself murdered” (Mowbray’s POV, around 73%)

There is a bit of weakness very near the end, by mostly showing the final twist ‘in real time’ as it were, rather than explaining it after the fact; this means there’s a bit less suspense leading to the climax, but still, most excellent plotting.

The truth, and the whole story behind it, is horrific; the ride to the denouement, as the protagonists free themselves from the shackles of their upbringing, is great. There’s even a bit of a romance thread! And, always a bonus, the villain gets what’s coming to them, even though it’s honestly not justice enough, as far as I’m concerned.

Unnatural Ends gets 9.00 out of 10

Caroline, Alan and Roger Linwood have been summoned home when Sir Lawrence Linwood is found bludgeoned to death in his study. They had all been adopted by Sir Lawrence and were raised to be competitive and successful. As the oldest, Alan assumed that he would inherit the estate. The will, however, stipulates that if death resulted from unnatural causes, the one who solved his murder would inherit everything. DI Mowbray has little evidence to go on and he is annoyed by the possible interference with his investigation. A mysterious woman in the mausoleum and an engraved watch found on the ground below the study point the Linwoods to a connection between the murder and their pasts.

Sir Lawrence was a harsh disciplinarian who personally took on the children’s education. Their mother had trained as a doctor, but had little contact with the children unless they needed her services. Alan, an archaeologist, Roger, an engineer, and Caroline, working as a journalist in Paris, have all discovered secrets relating to their birth mothers. Vimala Gurung from Nepal and Matsudaira Izumi from Japan both died shortly after giving birth at the Linwood estate. Alan’s mother, Sarah Whistler, is still alive. When Caroline finds her, she tells a story that proves how manipulative and devious Sir Lawrence was. His children were raised as an experiment. Now more people are dying and not everyone is who they seem. Sir Lawrence may be gone, but his experiment will continue until one of the Linwoods proves themselves worthy to be his heir. Christopher Huang’s story contains one twist after another and an ending that offers major surprises. Highly recommended! I would like to thank NetGalley and Inkshares for providing this book for my review.

It’s ironic that this review is going up the day before Father’s Day, since Christopher Huang’s Unnatural Ends is about one of the worst dads I’ve ever encountered in a work of fiction: Sir Lawrence Linwood, who rules over his Yorkshire estate with an iron fist. Since his wife was unable to bear children, Sir Lawrence took in three wards: Roger, Alan and Caroline. Now adults, they have all moved on from Linwood Hall; Alan is working as an archaeologist in Peru, Roger is an engineer with a glamorous girlfriend, and Caroline is living in France, writing for a Parisian newspaper. The novel is set in 1921, and both Roger and Alan are veterans of the Great War. Caroline and Roger appear to be biracial, though they don’t know anything about their heritage.

Only one thing could bring them all back to Linwood Hall: their father’s funeral. When they are all assembled, their mother shares the shocking news that Sir Lawrence was in fact murdered. But there are even bigger surprises to come. The attorney representing the estate informs them that upon their mother’s death, Linwood Hall is to be sold, with the proceeds divided equally among the children. That is, unless Sir Lawrence’s death was due to “unnatural causes.” In that case, Roger, Alan and Caroline are charged with the task of finding out who killed their father, with the “winner” receiving the entire estate.

The local detective inspector is wary, not wanting the three amateurs to go traipsing around looking for clues, but naturally, they all begin investigating. They start in their father’s study, site of his murder, and learn that Sir Lawrence was beaten to death inside a room that had been locked from the inside. How did the assailant get in and out without leaving a trace? Flashbacks to the siblings’ childhood show how monstrous he was, and how much he relished pitting them against one another. It appears he couldn’t resist giving them one final chance to battle it out.

Huang is a self-described fan of golden age mysteries, and lovers of the genre will find much to enjoy here: a victim so horrible that no one really mourns his death, plenty of clues and red herrings, and family secrets aplenty. I appreciated the fact that Huang shows a lot of compassion for his characters (well, except for the late Sir Lawrence); while one might expect Roger, Alan and Caroline to try to backstab each other at every turn, it becomes clear that despite their father’s efforts, they supported each other as children and continue to do so as adults. Unnatural Ends is primarily a whodunit, but it’s also a tale of resilience.

Thanks to Inkshares for the review copy, via NetGalley. Unnatural Ends will be published on Tuesday, June 20.