Aunt Dimity’s Death (An Aunt Dimity Mystery #1) By: Nancy Atherton

Plot:

Down-on-her-luck Lori Shepherd thought Aunt Dimity was a pretend character in her mother’s bedtime stories … until the Dickensian law firm of Willis & Willis offers the possibility of large inheritance — if she can discover the secret hidden in letters between Dimity and her mother. Plus 1-pg recipe Beth’s Oatmeal Cookies.

Review:

I didn’t realize just how long ago 1992 was until reading this book. The lead character is early thirties, I believe, maybe younger and she talks about how her mother worked for Eisenhower during WWII. The language is also more dated than I had expected.

Was not a fan of the heroine, Lori, she was destitute barely surviving and gets handed a golden ticket, awesome, but she’s so—ugh. I don’t have a problem with her attitudes toward money and all of a sudden getting to buy stuff, I have a problem with how she treated Bill. He was nice to her and she acted like a bitch to him. She was annoyed he was trying to be some kind of knight in shining armor and seemed to always think he was playing a prank on her, but he wasn’t.

She eventually warmed up to him, and she got better, still not one of my favorite characters, though. She was bossy to Bill, super friendly to everyone else, and went from not being able to cook to being able to pull off meringues without issue.

I picked this up months ago in my search for cozy mysteries. It was billed as one and I thought it sounded interesting enough, but this would not be considered a cozy with todays definitions. There wasn’t much of a mystery, just why did the ghost of Dimity feel unable to cross over. It was easily solved once they actually got around to it, and then that was it. The mystery wasn’t the reason for the story, overcoming grief and moving on with your life was. It was like the publisher really liked the story, wanted to publish it, but had no idea how to bill it so just slapped a mystery label on it.

I ended up crying within the first few pages because like the movie Up it hits the character with one loss after another and it’s super depressing. Honestly I cried throughout the entire thing because I empathize way too easily and all Lori did was come across things that reminded her of her mother or Dimity or someone else that was dead. Super depressing book, for me, and I don’t see myself reading the rest of the series.

3/5