How to Solve Your Own Murder by Kristen Perrin

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⭐️⭐️⭐️ (3/5) — HOW TO SOLVE YOUR OWN MURDER: A Clever Murder Puzzle… That Almost Murdered Me Trying to Keep Up 😵🔍

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⚠️ Trigger Warnings

This book contains:
⚰️ Death / murder
🗣️ Mild language
🏚️ Family dysfunction
🕵️‍♀️ Manipulation & deception
🔪 Poisoning

Please read with care! 💛

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🧠 My Thoughts Before the Summary

I’ll be honest: I picked this book up purely because of the title.
I mean… How to Solve Your Own Murder? YES, PLEASE. Whoever came up with that deserves a gold medal.

But then I started reading.
And, friends… I struggled.

This book has:

• a million characters 🧍‍♀️🧍🧍‍♂️🧍‍♀️🧍‍♂️

• multiple timelines 🕰️

• overlapping family histories 🌳

• a small-town web of secrets that’s basically its own ecosystem 🕸️

It’s a clever book.
It’s an ambitious book.
It even feels like a logic puzzle in novel form, which many readers love.

But for me? Reading shouldn’t require a personal spreadsheet.
I can 100% see why other people give this 4–5 stars — it’s smart, twisty, fun on paper.
But my enjoyment was definitely impacted by how hard I had to work to remember who was who and why they mattered.

So while the concept is brilliant and many readers will eat this up, I’m going with a 3 out of 5 for my personal enjoyment level.

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🚨 Spoiler Warning

Massive spoilers ahead — including the killer reveal and all the twists.

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📚 Overview

How to Solve Your Own Murder (2024) by Kristin Perrin is a quirky, twisty mystery that starts with a chilling fortune told in 1965 — one that predicts a girl’s murder. Decades later, her great-niece Annie Adams arrives in Castle Knoll to uncover what happened after her eccentric Great-Aunt Frances dies under suspicious circumstances.

The catch?
Frances’s will gives Annie one week to solve her murder — or lose the inheritance (and her mother’s home) to a land developer.

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🕰️ 1965: A Fortune Foretold

Teen friends Frances, Rose, and Emily hear a fortune predicting Frances will be murdered by a “bird.”
Shortly afterward, Emily disappears.
Frances begins a journal — and a lifelong obsession with her own predicted murder.

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🏠 Present Day: Annie Arrives

Annie travels to Castle Knoll, meets a cast of characters (lawyers, paramedics, caretakers, heirs, suspicious townsfolk), and then — BOOM — Frances is found dead with a bouquet of roses modified with needles instead of thorns.

Inside the manor:
Frances’s investigation boards.
Her files on decades of local secrets.
And her journal from the 1960s, which Annie snatches up.

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💉 Poison, Old Secrets, and a Town Full of Motives

Annie discovers the bouquet was laced with hemlock (not fatal), but Frances actually died from a lethal iron injection — the kind used on horses.

As Annie reads Frances’s teen journal, we learn:

• Emily manipulated their friend group

• Emily may have been pregnant

• Saxon Gravesdown (creepy little boy → creepy grown man) lurked everywhere

• Rose and Emily’s friendship was deeply toxic

• Emily and Frances both had complicated relationships with the handsome Ford Gravesdown

Meanwhile, Annie uncovers:

• A body hidden in a trunk she accidentally shipped to Frances

• A missing pharmacy stash including iron injections

• Saxon involved in a drug operation

• Frances’s massive archive of town scandals

• Threatening notes

• Everyone lying about something

Oh, and Emily?
Her baby (given up at birth) is actually Annie’s mother, Laura.

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💔 The Murderers Revealed

The final unraveling reveals that the killer(s) aren’t who anyone expected:

1. Rose (Frances’s childhood friend) killed Emily.

Rose was obsessed with Frances and furious that Emily copied her, manipulated her, and threatened their friendship.
Rose lured Emily to the basement in London and shot her using the pistol Frances dropped earlier.

2. Joe Leroy (Rose’s son) killed Frances.

Frances knew the truth and was preparing to expose Rose.
Joe delivered the bouquet, hid the real threat, and then injected Frances while pretending to “help.”

Joe tries to kill Annie too — but she survives and exposes him.

Annie officially solves the case and inherits the estate.

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🌷 Final Thoughts

This book is:

• Clever

• Ambitious

• Full of twists

• Packed with small-town secrets

• Structurally fascinating

But also:

• Character-heavy

• Timeline-heavy

• Relationship-heavy

• Easily confusing if you don’t read in long stretches

I appreciate the craft.
I appreciate the creativity.
But my brain needed flashcards.

⭐ 3 out of 5 — smart, twisty, and puzzle-like, but personally too dense for my reading taste.

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📚 If You Liked How to Solve Your Own Murder, Try These:

🔍 The Thursday Murder Club — similar vibes but funnier
📝 The Appeal by Janice Hallett — mystery told through documents
🎭 The Hive by Gregg Olsen — small-town secrets galore
🎩 The Westing Game — the OG puzzle-mystery