Story for the Week
How many times have you felt like you need a vacation right after arriving home from a vacation? It sounds crazy and more than a little backwards 🙃, but I know so many people who relate to the sentiment.
It makes sense to feel rushed and out of sorts when you’re getting ready to go on vacation. There’s packing, making sure the pets are taken care of, make sure someone is bringing in the mail or it’s on hold at the Post Office. Does everyone have their passport if it’s required, or does one person have all of them? Do you have the confirmation e-mails for the flights, hotel, rental cars. Is the luggage too heavy to be checked without an extra charge? Do you have something to do on the plane?
When my husband was still alive, he always wanted to take the earliest possible flight with the rationale that we wouldn’t lose a whole day to travel. I tried to explain to him a later flight would be better…something mid-day, but he was never convinced. So every vacation, the alarm would be set for 4:30 a.m. so we could be at the airport by 6:00 for an 8:00 flight. But then we’d arrive at our destination exhausted and hungry but unable to check in to the hotel until 3:00. We never failed to lose that first day to travel, but Dennis was stubborn and always thought he would get the most out of every day.
Dennis did not vacation to relax. Dennis vacationed to do something every day. Our first trip to Disneyworld after we got married, we went to a park each day and Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure. He designated one day for shopping at Disney Springs.
Once we came home, there was the unpacking, laundry, putting away and handing out the myriad of souvenirs, and then going back to work. The longer we were married, I figured out how to make sure I got what I needed out of our vacations. I would build in extra vacation days at the beginning and end so the packing wouldn’t be so chaotic and I had “recovery time” at the end. Dennis went back to work and Corinne went back to school…and I could relax because that’s what I need from vacation.
Over time, I learned how to sneak in a day to relax mid-vacation. It wasn’t total relaxation. It was laundry so we didn’t have to pack as much up front and we’d come home with less laundry to be done, but it wasn’t a go go go do do do kind of day. 😏 I’m still not entirely sure how I convinced him, but it worked.
Dennis didn’t believe in stay-cations either. He wholeheartedly believed that they were a waste of vacation days. Why would someone ever want to take vacation time and not travel? Corinne and I just finished a stay-cation over her spring break. We slept in most days, we went to some museums we’ve been wanting to go to, and we just enjoyed spending time together with no real plans…talking and watching television with no school or work commitments. It was glorious…until she gave me her cold right before Easter. 🤧
We have another vacation coming in June after Corinne graduates…a Disney cruise (our third and what I determined is my favorite kind of vacation) to the Bahamas. We booked the five-day because it includes an extra day at sea (which we intend to spend playing Bingo 🤫), and we planned exactly zero excursions. For our first cruise, Dennis was alive, and we had an excursion every day. On our second cruise, we planned one (Where’s Your Happy Place?). It was late June, so I took advantage of a 4th of July holiday break at work and had two full weeks off after the cruise, and that might have been a little too long. I almost didn’t want to go back. 🤣
Whether you’re a plan-every-single-minute vacationer or a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants vacationer, here’s hoping that your vacation doesn’t end up like the main character’s in the book reviewed below. She definitely needs another vacation. 😜
Book Review
⭐⭐
2 Stars for Every Time I Go on Vacation, Someone Dies by Catherine Mack
344 pages
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press/Minotaur Books
Publication Date: April 30, 2024
I received an advance copy of this title from NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press/Minotaur Books.
Publisher’s Description
Ten days, eight suspects, six cities, five authors, three bodies…one trip to die for.
All that bestselling author Eleanor Dash wants is to get through her book tour in Italy and kill off her main character, Connor Smith, in the next in her Vacation Mysteries series—is that too much to ask?
Clearly, because when an attempt is made on the real Connor’s life—the handsome but infuriating con man she got mixed up with ten years ago and now can’t get out of her life—Eleanor’s enlisted to help solve the case.
Contending with literary competitors, rabid fans, a stalker—and even her ex, Oliver, who turns up unexpectedly—theories are bandied about, and rivalries, rifts, and broken hearts are revealed. But who’s really trying to get away with murder?
************
Main Characters:
- Eleanor Dash – 35-year-old bestselling mystery author of nine books in her Vacation Mysteries series, on a book tour in Italy with several other authors and fans through her publisher approaching the 10-year anniversary of her first release, toying with the idea of killing off the main character in the series
- Connor Smith – former private investigator who led an investigation of some robberies in Rome 10 years prior, solved the case with Eleanor and they also had a one-year fling, no longer an investigator since Eleanor’s book made him semi-famous, believes that someone on the tour is trying to kill him
- Harper Dash – Eleanor’s younger sister, works as Eleanor’s assistant, her dream when she was younger was to be a bestselling author
- Allison Smith – Connor’s ex-wife, Eleanor didn’t know they were married when she and Connor were involved, so Allison and Eleanor have a tense relationship at best, she is also on the book tour
- Guy Charles – Connor’s former business partner, but their business fell apart once Connor became well-known
- Shek Botha – another mystery author on the book tour, has the same publisher as Eleanor
- Oliver Forrest – another author on the book tour with the same publisher as Eleanor, also a former love of Eleanor after she split up with Connor
- Emily Ma – a bestselling author in Italy on the book tour
- Isabella Joseph – Canadian tourist who Connor met on the plane on the way to Italy
The title of this book grabbed me, and the description sounded like fun, which is why I requested the advance copy. It starts with a great hook: “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. I want to commit a homicide.” Who wouldn’t want to keep reading?
Eleanor Dash wrote her first novel after a vacation in Rome turned into a serial-robbery-turned-murder investigation and a love affair with the charismatic private investigator Connor Smith. Once she returned home to New York, she spent several months fictionalizing the story of what happened in Rome. Her biggest mistake, however, was changing everyone’s name but Connor’s.
Throughout the book, Eleanor eludes to Connor holding something over her head from 10 years prior, something she would not want revealed. As a result, when her publisher continues to request new books in the Vacation Series, Connor takes a bigger percentage of her royalties to keep her secret. And while she’s on this book tour to celebrate the 10-year anniversary of the first book’s release, she makes notes about how she plans to kill off the main character so she can be rid of Connor for good. But then someone seems to want him dead for real.
With a multitude of suspects, since Connor has ticked off a pretty significant number of people, the book within a book plotline has a ton of potential. That said, I really struggled to enjoy it.
A lot of reviewers seem to have a problem with Eleanor breaking the fourth wall…addressing the reader. I don’t necessarily have a problem with that. It can be a really effective method of pulling the reader into the story, as if you’re sitting in the same room with the narrator listening to her tell the story in real time. But the way she chooses to do it in this case is with footnotes that aren’t really footnotes. They’re asides. They’re parentheticals. As footnotes, they add absolutely nothing to the story, and on a digital copy of the book, it was a pain flipping back and forth between the text and the footnotes. I can’t even imagine how they would work in an audiobook.
When you see a footnote in an article, it’s a citation of some kind, adds information that isn’t necessarily part of the article. Typically when footnotes are “stacked,” and you have two footnotes together, they’re different citations, two clearly separate pieces of information. Eleanor’s footnotes are side comments that could easily be left out (which she acknowledges herself), and when she stacks them together, they’re two or three sentences that could have easily been in one note. I think they are supposed to be humorous, maybe add some levity to the book, but they did not work at all for me.
- He claims it was mostly paid for with his finder’s fee money,ii….
- iiMore about this later
- Because I always take the opportunity to have the last word if I can unless I’m using silence for emphasis.iii ii
- iiNot my best characteristic, but can you blame a writer?
- iiiGiven how this is going, my last words will probably be a footnote.
- Or maybe it’s the alcohol.vi
- viIt’s probably the alcohol.
- Uh-oh.viii ix
- viiiAll my footnotes are getting cut, aren’t they?
- ixI mean, there’s almost three hundred of them so I shouldn’t be surprised?
Honestly, I almost stopped reading a quarter of the way through because of the footnotes, but I saw so many reviews from people who thought they were hilarious and creative. Me? Not so much. This isn’t a research paper. Include the parentheticals in the text, or don’t include them at all. It was so annoying to flip to the footnote and read “more about this later” because it actively pulled me out of the story and added absolutely nothing.
Another thing I really don’t like is that about 70% of the way into the book, there is actually a chapter called “Breaking the Fourth Wall.” Eleanor takes a break in telling the story to recap the story so far and outline all the possible suspects, including herself. And then she tells us it’s our turn to solve the case because we’ve reached the third act. No…just no. I don’t want you to pull me completely out of the story. I don’t want or need a refresh of the characters. Just finish the book!
The case gets solved at the end. Of course it does. I suspected one person that I was right about, but I didn’t know the how or why of the person’s involvement until the very end. From that perspective, it was a decent mystery, which is why the 2 stars instead of 1.
This humorous mystery is a debut under this pseudonym for an author with several bestselling psychological thrillers under her belt. Two of them I have read, enjoyed, and reviewed in the past (Eight Years, Six Days on My TBR List and Your Pride is the Only One That Matters). I hope she hones this new craft, but this one is a miss for me.
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