Published: July 2025
Pages: 304
Series: Standalone
Summary
There’s been a murder at Elysium, a wellness retreat set in an English country manor. You arrive to find the body of a local businessman on the lawn – with a rose placed in his mouth. It appears he was stabbed with a gardening fork and fell to his death from the balcony above. But that balcony can only be accessed through a locked door, the key is missing, and everyone in Elysium is now a suspect…
My thoughts
This is such a fun book! Have you ever wanted to be the detective in a murder mystery, where you make decisions that guide the story and open up different options? You can do that with this one!
This book is written in sections and at the end of each section you are left with options and you must make a decision. This decision will take you to a different section of the book where the story continues. You can choose which evidence to investigate, which location to move to, which suspect to question.. and the sections are muddled across the full text so it’s impossible to cheat!
Bonus points because this is Kindle accessible with embedded hyperlinks.
An extra bonus is this is even more interactive. Make sure to bring a pen with you as you’ll need to jot down certain clues you’ve gathered to make sure you move to the right piece of text and that you accuse the right person! With multiple endings I ended up reading this four times so that I could see each arm of the story to its conclusion, and there are some twist and turns.
The other piece I loved about this is that I didn’t know how far along I was. I couldn’t see how many pages were left and think ‘just a few more and I’m finished’. I had no idea! I was so engrossed with the story that I didn’t feel the need to check, not that it would be a giveaway anyway.
It was an interesting plot with lots going on and plenty of suspects up to no-good! I think if it was this plot written as a normal mystery book it would have been slightly boring. The interactive-ness of this is what pushed the stars up for me. It was interesting enough to keep me picking it up and so fun to play detective it made up for the plot not being as entirely thrilling as some other crime books I’ve read. It’s a give and take but otherwise I’m glad I picked this up.
The story itself felt like cluedo met Agatha Christie. Set at a resort with unique locations to visit and clues to dig out, where customers are called ‘Friends’. My only other annoyance – and maybe I’m just being super fussy – is the book title. I wish the title was about the plot instead of the concept of the book.
Would I recommend?
Totally, this was fun, interactive and engaging. Multiple endings with the opportunity to re-read and find a different path, this is a great concept even if you just want to try it once!