I got this book on a whim to try out a more recent book by a new author.

The book is set as a collection of short stories, all with inconsistencies in them which function as 'hints' to a 'real world mystery.' The story is read, and then there is a conversation about the story and what it means for the murder mystery genre in general.

The short stories are entertaining (although one is basically a rip-off of 'And Then There Were None', which the book acknowledges) and it was fun to try and figure out the murder mystery in each story yourself, however the clues that the reader is given throughout the story to try and solve the mystery in the 'real world' doesn't quite add up at the end.

The ending reveals that the stories we have read were modified by Julia, the protagonist, as Julia came to this island to meet Grant McAllister, her estranged father; she was not a book editor at all, and the company she works for is fake.

She accidentally left out a key part of the first story, and realised that 'Grant' did not clock this, so had a feeling that the man she was talking to was not Grant. Due to this, she modifies all the other stories to try and see if 'Grant' will clock them, and when she doesn't, she reveals that she has done this and believes that 'Grant' is actually Francis Gardner, the man who Grant ran away with to get away from Julia's mother.

It turns out Grant died 10 years ago and Francis took his identity for monetary purposes.

The problem with this reveal is that we are not really given any clues to direct us in this direction, as it's only after Julia makes the accusation that we can even put 2+2 together. We can't make any real observations to figure out that Julia's story with the editing company is bunk, nor that the stories are modified and the person we're talking to is not Grant. After the reveal, I didn't feel like things 'made sense', like in other good mystery stories, it was just something that happened at the end.

The second reveal is that after Julia retires to her room, Francis goes to check on an old photograph of Grant's, and it turns out that he had a letter from Elizabeth White, the victim of the 'The White Murder', who actually wrote the stories that Grant published. From this, we are meant to conclude that the actual murderer of Elizabeth White is Grant McAllister, and this is the real reason he ran away from home and left Julia without a father. This means that the inconsistencies in the stories that Julia points out are hints of the 'The White Murder' that Grant put into these stories when he published them, as he was the one who murdered her.

However, there is no follow-up to this or any explanation as to the details of the murder of Elizabeth White, so this feels like a very unsatisfying conclusion. If the ending continued a little to tie it all up to the reader, it would have been a decent conclusion, but this never happens! We're meant to just believe from the circumstantial evidence this is how it happened.

Overall, I enjoyed reading the book and would recommend it, but don't expect a satisfying conclusion. I will try Ink Ribbon Red by the same author and hopefully that one is a little more put together.