Kristen Perrin

Book Review: HOW TO CHEAT YOUR OWN DEATH by Kristen Perrin

| Jessica Crawford

How to Cheat Your Own Death by Kristen Perrin is the third book in the Castle Knoll Files series of murder mysteries. It’s a 336 page novel to be published by Dutton on April 28, 2026.

Genre

Mystery

Description

From the gritty streets of 1960s Soho to the lofty galleries of present-day West London, two interlocking mysteries decades apart unfold in this latest instalment in the award-winning, New York Times bestselling Castle Knoll Murder Mystery series

Some secrets are deadlier than others

1968: Frances Adams is loving her new London life, and she’s stepped into a world of glamour thanks to her new friend, Vera Huntington–a magnetic socialite as mysterious as she is provocative. Vera dances around London like she owns it, taking Frances with her.

Present day: When Annie Adams heads to London to visit her famous artist mother, Laura, the last thing she expects to find is a dead body. Least of all for it to be Laura’s new protégée, left in an alley with her heart surgically removed from her chest.

Annie is no stranger to murder–after all, she’s solved a few already. And something about this case feels familiar. She’s read about one just like it in the journals of her late great aunt Frances, whose friend Vera was killed in the 1960s in the exact same way.

As Annie investigates, threats pile up on Laura’s doorstep, and it soon becomes clear that she’s next. With her mother’s life on the line, can Annie find the killer before it’s too late?

Opening Line

The neon lights of Soho bounced off the autumn puddles, their reflections half interrupted by the steady droplets of freezing rain.

My Thoughts

I think this was my favorite entry in the Castle Knoll Files so far!

Or, possibly, I now just have a greater appreciation for skilled writing and plots not riddled with holes when it comes to my reading of mysteries.

Either way, How to Cheat Your Own Death, book three in the series, is an engaging murder mystery that once again alternates between Annie Adams investigating with Rowan Crane in current times and the journal entries of her Great Aunt Frances that are tied to the case in some way. This one takes place in London, where Annie’s famous artist mother has welcomed her absent father back into their lives and has also taken on an apprentice in an uncharacteristic move. Laura Adams begins receiving threats in the form of animal hearts left on her doorstep, and then someone turns up murdered and dumped in her trash receptacle. As Annie and Crane work to figure out what happened, they also puzzle through what it might have to do with Frances’s history with a wealthy family in the 1960s, a murdered socialite, and a local art gallery.

I was intrigued with the threads of story around the paintings and Frances’s time as a university psychology student. There are some fascinating characters here, as well as some truly awful ones. There is also some movement on the romance front in this installment.

This book kept me up late to continue plowing through its pages to learn the truth. I will happily read any more that follow in the series!

My gratitude to Dutton and NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for my honest review.

Book Review: HOW TO SEAL YOUR OWN FATE by Kristen Perrin

| Jessica Crawford

How to Seal Your Own Fate by Kristen Perrin is a 320 page novel, the second in the Castle Knoll Files series, from PENGUIN GROUP Dutton with a publish date of April 29, 2025.

Genre:

Mystery

Synopsis:

Kristen Perrin is back with the second novel in her Castle Knoll series. Annie Adams is caught in a new web of murder that spans decades, returning us to the idyllic English village that holds layers of secrets.

Present Annie Adams is just settling into life in Castle Knoll when local fortune teller Peony Lane crosses her path and shares a cryptic message. When Peony Lane is found dead only hours later inside the locked Gravesdown Estate, Annie quickly realizes that someone is out to make her look guilty while silencing Peony at the same time. Annie has no choice but to delve into the dark secrets of Castle Knoll in order to find out just what Peony Lane was trying to warn her about, before the new life she’s just begun to build comes crashing down around her.

1967: A year has passed since her friend Emily disappeared, and teenage Frances Adams finds herself caught between two men. Ford Gravesdown is one of the only remaining members of a family known for its wealth and dubious uses of power. Archie Foyle is a local who can’t hold down a job and lives above the village pub. But when Frances teams up with Archie to investigate the car crash that claimed the lives of Ford’s family, it quickly becomes clear that this was no accident—hints of cover-ups, lies, and betrayals abound. The question is, just how far does the blackness creep through the heart of Castle Knoll? When Frances uncovers secrets kept by both Ford and Archie, she starts to What exactly has she gotten herself into?

Opening Line:

Her name had always been too plain, she thought, as she looked at the prison register in front of her, which required her signature.

My Thoughts:

This was another engaging murder mystery in the Castle Knoll Files.

I do think I would have benefitted from rereading How to Solve Your Own Murder before jumping into this one, to better remember the characters we were previously introduced to, their relationships and motivations. In general they are an interesting collection of folk from a seemingly idyllic English countryside, one of whom offers the possibility of a future romance for our main character, Annie.

This time, it’s the intriguing figure of Peony Lane, the fortune teller who set Great Aunt Frances on her life’s course of trying to solve her own murder before it occurred, that gets caught up in the middle of the action. What might she have to do the Foyles, Sparrows, as well as the Gravesdowns of yore? And why do these crimes always seem to come knocking right at Annie’s door?

Alternating chapters between Annie’s current timeline (in present tense POV) and young Frances’s diary entries got a bit confusing to me, as both included many of the same characters and events, and so it became difficult to keep straight who already knew what in their respective investigations. And the particulars of this mystery wind up being quite convoluted and at times a bit of a stretch.

That being said, I was still definitely entertained by this contemporary whodunnit, and would happily read the next installment of Annie’s adventures in investigating secrets in order to solve crimes.

Thank you to Dutton, Penguin Random House, and NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for my unbiased review.

Battle of the Book Covers March 2024 Edition!

| Jessica Crawford

Here are the books that I read in March that have differing book covers. Which ones do you prefer?

A decaying horse or human skeleton covered in insect and plant life? I can’t choose, both are perfectly horrifying! I suppose I like the font the the UK cover of What Feasts at Night by T. Kingfisher a bit better, if I had to find something off of which to pick a favorite.

I think both of these covers for Blake Crouch’s Recursion are fine, but I’ll go with the US edition this time, because the UK cover makes me think of a spaceship or some other form of alien technology, which is not what it’s meant to do.

Although the cover image including the manor house might be more fitting, I hands down prefer the US cover of The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years by Shubnum Khan – beautiful color scheme, enticing swirling smoke imagery, mysterious lady in gorgeous apparel, shadowy hands, oh my!

I think the US version of the cover of How to Solve Your Own Murder by Kristen Perrin has a super cute and engaging art style, much more so than the UK version.

I think the cover design of the US version of Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar is unique and interesting, plus I’m just not a fan of the colors used in the UK edition.

So other than the T. Kingfisher Sworn Soldier novella, which was a close call anyway, I guess this month is a big dub for the US of A. What are your thoughts?

Book Review: HOW TO SOLVE YOUR OWN MURDER by Kristen Perrin

| Jessica Crawford

I greatly enjoyed this whodunit with a twist, that being that the murder victim left behind clues in all her research into figuring out who was going to kill her!

Annie Adams finds herself written into her Great Aunt Frances’ will without ever having met the woman, but then almost immediately Frances winds up murdered, just as a fortune teller told her she would be when she was seventeen years old. Her recently revised will stipulates that Annie and one other relative must compete to figure out who murdered her; whoever wins, gets the entire inheritance. If neither solves the crime by the end of a week’s time, then the estate goes to property developers who will likely turn it into a county club and golf course.

While investigating, Annie also reads through her great aunt’s journal from the time when her (mis)fortune was originally told. In its pages, she meets the teenage versions of many of the same villagers she is just meeting in person, a whole cast of characters in an idyllic English village.

I did have to suspend my disbelief a bit when some parts of the mystery were too far-fetched, but I was having enough fun that I didn’t mind doing that. I was kept flipping pages to find out what had happened! It keeps you guessing right up until the end. I do wish we delved a little deeper into some of these characters, but I can see how that would be a challenge with first person narration.

Overall this was a fun read. Thank you to NetGalley and Dutton for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

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