Review by Booklist Review
Claire, a burnt out medium, is invited to perform a séance as the entertainment at an 80th birthday party for Nana, the matriarch of a posh family, at a stately British country house. The morning of the party, Nana is found dead and her ghost directs Claire and Sophie, the ghost of Claire's best friend from long-ago school days who has been haunting Claire since Sophie disappeared at 17, to the library where they discover a spirit in distress. Nana believes this is the spirit of a person who was killed at her birthday party the previous year and asks them to investigate. Claire, who can commune with the dead, and Sophie, whose ghostly abilities allow her to walk through walls, partner with two members of Nana's family--a handsome, former police detective named Bastion and a nonbinary teen named Alex--to investigate a murder with an unknown victim and no dead body. Laugh-out-loud situations, charming characters (both living and dead), and good sleuthing make this a terrific read. Hopefully this is only the first of many mysteries for this delightful duo and friends.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Bell shines in her sharp, funny debut, a supernatural whodunit centered on medium-for-hire Claire Hendricks. Claire and her best friend, Sophie, are headed to a former monastery in the small English town of Wilbourne Major, where Figgy Wellington-Forge, Claire's university friend, has invited her to entertain the family with her gift. Readers will quickly deduce that Sophie is actually a ghost who serves as Claire's spirit guide and eavesdrops on her marks to provide information that makes her powers seem more impressive. But Figgy's plans to hold a séance as a birthday treat for her grandmother go awry when Nana dies suddenly. Her ghost appears to Claire and Sophie to inform them that, while her death was natural, she's met the ghost of an unknown person inside the house's library who was recently murdered. Claire decides to help solve the mystery, and enlists some of Figgy's more trustworthy kin, while heeding Nana's warning that someone in the family was the killer. The adroit plotting, which cannily plays with mystery tropes, is amply leavened with humor. Fans of the British TV series Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) will be eager for more adventures from Claire and Sophie. Agent: Stevie Finegan, Zeno Literary. (Sept.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
How do you solve a murder when you don't know who the victim is? Claire Hendricks has a leg up on your run-of-the-mill sleuth: Her BFF Sophie is a sassy teenage ghost who helps Claire communicate with the dead. The live woman and the ghost--who died in the 1990s under mysterious circumstances--travel around England performing séances, and now they're heading to Wilbourne Major, where they've been hired by Figgy Wellington-Forge to entertain at her grandmother's birthday party. Three generations of Wellington-Forges gather at the family estate, where, unfortunately, Nana dies the night before her party. This simultaneously casts a pall over the festivities and leads Claire on a quest: Nana, in her first moments on the other side, sees a sad-looking ghost wandering through the library and begs Claire to figure out who it is and how they died. With the help of Figgy's brother Basher and nonbinary nibling, Alex, Claire is able to pin down Nana's birthday party the year before as the site of the murder and one of the guests as the victim. Claire, who usually has little company other than Sophie and the rest of the dead, revels in her newfound friendships with Basher and Alex even as she turns a skeptical eye to the rest of their family. The next few days see Claire following a series of clues (with help from local ghosts) to try to figure out if a Wellington-Forge is in fact a murderer and which unlucky party guest died. But Claire has a secret in her past, and her excitement is clouded by anxiety: Will she be abandoned when the truth is revealed? There are certainly a few missteps in this mystery. The sprawling family, for example, could have stood to be a little less sprawling (maybe Bell could have cut out a generation?) as the many posh-named characters are hard to keep track of. And while Bell occasionally mistakes cheap one-liners for wit, there is just enough humor and heart to keep readers amused. A goofy supernatural whodunit. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
