Reviews with content warning for Death - Death at Morning House

I had high hopes for this story and was looking forward to an enticing mystery. Right off the bat, I was already suspecting I was going to be disappointed due to how simple the setup was, predicting and assuming that there were little to no opportunities for a good twist with the premise of the story to begin with. Still, I wanted to give it the benefit of the doubt. Needless to say, I was suprirsed, not by the twist so much as just how boring and mind-numbing this book would be. P.S. Feel free to read on, I will cover up all the spoilers so you don't have to be afraid of reading this review and having the twist spoiled for you.

The book roughly takes place in the present 60-75% of the time. The rest of the book takes place in the past, around the time of the murders that we are made aware of at the very start of the book. The entirety of the present-day portion of the book (after the inciting incident) just straight up has no plot. At all. The character just goes to work on the island where Morning House is as a tour guide, and that's it. The author is literally describing her just going around and meeting new people. Now, there are portions of the present-day mystery drip fed to us every so often, but aside from that, literally nothing is happening. The only actually interesting parts are the chapters that take place in the past that actually have a half-decent plot structure as some weird stuff starts happening with the family (weirder than usual), and certain members of the household try to deal with the situation and actually have goals and motivation and opposition. The present-day has none of that. No story goal. Marlowe is just there to do her job. There is nothing to strive for. Even after the halfway point when

we find out a guy was murdered on the other island and now the supervisor has gone missing and is presumed dead

, the characters still don't get a story goal. One of the characters ropes the protagonist into searching a room, but that's it.

And sadly, as superior the past chapters were to the present ones, they weren't anything that special either, just like I was worried about when I learned of the setup at the start of the book.

But aside from over half of the book just straight up having no plot, the second biggest sin this book commits is poorly executing its mystery/twist. We do not get sufficient information to put the puzzle pieces together on our own until it's time to reveal the twist. There is some foreshadowing, but all supurfluous info that doesn't really allow us to deduce what happened until the author wants us to. Why even write a mystery at all then? Because the premise is so simple and not really creative, I feel like the author was afraid to give us too many clues because we'd be able to figure it out too early, which is true, but it's not an excuse for a poorly written mystery. Either the premise should be so creative you can dangle the culprit in our faces and we wouldn't be able to put the pieces together ourselves, or you need to give us so many pieces to think about so we don't see the ones that obviously fit together until it's time for the big reveal.

The author does a good job of leading us towards the conclusion that one of the kids, Clara, killed her brother, Max, then fell off the roof either as attempted suicide or by accident. However, without little to no warning or foreshadowing, she then reveals near the end it was actually Unity, a different sister, who killed her, and only then gave us all the information about her character that frankly should have been given to us much earlier. Like I said, the author decided to withold any relevant information until it was time to reveal the culprit. You would not have been able to make an educated guess with the information she did decide to provide prior to the murder. They were just weird seemingly random things that happened because we did not get to see much of the goals or motives of any other character outside of Clara, the red herring.

The book keeps mentioning the theme of things hiding in plain sight, yet the author doesn't practice what she preaches with her own story, making important clues downright invisible or non-existent at worst. I personally hate it when mysteries are written like that because they don't feel like mysteries at all. It's like the author is asking you to solve a puzzle blindfolded and then telling you it was a good puzzle because you couldn't solve it.

Honestly, I regret forcing myself to finish this book. I wish I had DNFed it and just looked up what the twists were. I didn't partly because sometimes twists just don't hit the same outside of context. Again, I'm sad I wasted my time with a very poor excuse of a mystery book. This is a YA book, and a lot of people will say that they need to have simpler mysteries for a younger audience, but this isn't wasn't even Scooby Doo level difficulty. Again, there was no difficulty to judge because the author didn't even want to give us a chance to do any problem solving of our own before she decided it was time for us to learn the truth.

It wasn't the worst thing I've ever written, hence the 2-star rating, but I would not recommend it to mystery lovers. And for those of you who have decided by now this book is not worth your time but want to know the twist, here it comes. I must reiterate that you only read the following sections if you've decided 100% you do not want to read or finish this book, otherwise this will spoil the whole thing for you. You've been warned. Sadly, it will probably not make sense to you, again, because the author hardly gives us any clues for us to be able to figure it out on our own until the very end, but here it is:

Past: The dad says he adopted six kids, but they are actually his biological kids he had with different women he was sleeping with because he was obsessed with eugenics, and almost no one knew this--they thought Max, the youngest, was his only biological child. Max has serious mental health problems and started hurting people. Clara did some investigating and found this out, but, plot twist, it was actually Unity who killed him, not Clara. It turns out she was obsessed with her dad and his philosphies, and it's speculated whether she was jealous of the attention Max was getting or because Max's mental health issues were proof that her father was wrong about everything he was spewing regarding eugenics. She later kind of killed Clara because Clara found out Unity was the murderer, and hit her with a chair twice, after which Clara fell off the balcony. She told her dad, the aunt overheard them, and they tried to keep it a secret until the aunt decided she could not let Unity live after murdering her brother and sister, so she took her out to a frozen lake and drowned them both under the ice.

Present: Marlowe meets a group of kids who are childhood friends and works with them as a tour guide on the island. A douchebag named Chris died some time ago so Marlowe was his replacement. Then, while Marlowe is there, a senior member researching the history of the island is later killed. Turns out April, the readhead girl, pushed Chris off the cliff before, and then thought the senior professor was looking into his murder, so she pushed her off the balcony of Morning House and hid her body, then tried burning the house down to destroy the evidence and possibly get rid of some of the other kids looking into her disappearence. We het even less foreshadowing and clues for her being the killer if that's even possible. Again, there is no way for you to make an educated guess on who the killers were until the author reveals them, which I hate.

So, there you have it. Like I said, it's not satisfying because the twists come out of nowhere and you will have had no way of even suspecting anything. 2 stars. Would not recommend.

P.S. That was a very weird choice to have Marlowe end up with

the girl from the first act instead of Riki, with whom we've spent more time and got attached to as readers.

Content Warnings

betweentheshelves's review against another edition

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adventurous mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

Not my favorite of Maureen Johnson's books, but not a bad mystery! It's a little slow moving until about halfway through the book, as that's when the mystery on the island with Marlowe really picks up. There are some interesting twists included, and the layering of the two stories does increase the intrigue. The last fourth definitely had me hooked, as I had to see how it all unraveled!

Content Warnings

booksandbabble's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

Content Warnings

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