Woof. That was bad. I was hoping to find a new series to read/love but that is definitely not happening with this one. Honestly, there is zero character development with the lead (Shana), we get random things happening with suspects, we hear about a previous incident that happened before she moved with her fiancée, and then the book just keeps going on and on. Not one thing made any sense at the end and I just didn’t even get what Wegert was going for in this one. There was just too many things that occurred that were beyond dumb I could not get over it.
“Death in the Family” follows Shana Merchant gets a call that a man (Jasper) is missing, presumed murdered on a island privately owned by the Sinclair family in upstate New York. Shana is dealing with her move away from New York after something horrible (it takes forever to find out what went on by the way) and she’s worried about having a case like this which could bring back bad memories. Her fiancée (FYI it’s tedious how many times the man is called just that) is worried that this is too much for Shana, but she’s determined to investigate with her investigator, Tim Wellington. Arriving on the island, Shana and Tim don’t find a body, but a bloody bed and a house full of suspects who all have their own reasons for wanting Jasper dead.
Honestly, this should have been a good book. I love locked room mysteries, set it on an island during a bad storm this should have worked. However, nothing did because Wegert was all over the place with the story. I honestly think that Shana’s backstory should have been set up in the beginning, or just alluded to and that’s it since it took too much time away from the central mystery of where is Jasper Sinclair and who is responsible for him missing and or murder. Instead we have too many things going on that wreck the flow of the book and just really don’t help with developing any of the characters and that includes Shana and Tim.
Speaking of Shana, I don’t even know what to say about her outside of again, Wegert couldn’t figure out what to do with her, make her a damsel in distress, a hard nosed detective, a victim, etc. It was just too much. I
The writing was not good at all. So many sentences I read didn’t even make sense to me and I found myself re-reading so many times to even grasp what was being said. I think it didn’t help that mid-interrogation we had Shana sometimes going into a fugue state and we had to keep hearing about “Bram” the whole time or her thoughts on her fiancee Carson.
The setting of the house/island was actually the only things that I liked about this book.
The ending made zero sense when we get to the final reveals of who did what to who. I thought it took way too many leaps of logic to get here and not enough was wrapped up in my mind.
I read this for Halloween Bingo 2025 “Parlor Room Mystery.”
