100 years
100 years

Bath and North East Somerset Libraries


Young Adult Space

YA
YA

Catch Your Death by Ravena Guron


Catch your Death by Ravena Guron

Our Rating:

Rating: 3 out of 5.

Library Formats:

Book

Age Group:

Young Adult

Genre:

Crime


Catch Your Death takes a classic Agatha Christie-style country house murder and turns everything on its head.

Three 17 year old girls find themselves stranded in an isolated mansion on the night their reluctant hosts, the rich and powerful Vanforte family, are planning a very special dinner. When Emily Vanforte is poisoned the girls have to try and identify the murderer to keep themselves safe, while contending with antique knives, a disappearing gun and secret passages everywhere – not to mention the remaining strange and dysfunctional family members.

I’m not going to say more about the plot in case I give something away, because on top of the usual clues and red herrings of a classic whodunnit, there are one or two huge twists that pull the rug out from everything the reader thinks they know.

There are some flaws in the writing. The characters can be overdrawn on a key characteristic (Lizzie in particular is often quite two-dimensional in how often we’re told she’s nervous and shy), and the three girls sound exactly the same in narration and several times I was a page into a chapter before realising it was a different person narrating and had to check the chapter title to see who it was. And the ending, after the grand reveal, is protracted and could do with being cut in half.

But where Guron excels is the plot and the pace. The story barrels along, yet you never lose track of the many clues. The big plot twists carry all the threads with them and not one is dropped or left untied at the end. If you want a rollicking good 1940s murder mystery dropped squarely in the 21st century, then this is the book for you!