2 Stars

One Liner: Interesting premise but painful execution

The Cotswolds, England, December 1895

Imogene Lynch moves to Dartmond to solve a case her recently dead husband, Thaddeus Lynch, was working on. He was a chief constable working on an adoption case from the family. Sir Finley Lowther’s father tells him that he was adopted as a child but doesn’t give any other information.

Though Finley is not particularly interested in finding his real mother, his brother-in-law, Thaddeus Lynch, takes up the case to assist his sister Anna (Finley’s wife).

With Thaddeus dead, it’s up to Imogene to get to the root of the matter. However, an old baby’s skull ends up in a fishing net, and Miss Eloise Platt confesses to the crime. Imogene has no choice but to solve this new case as Miss Platt is a possible candidate to be Finley’s real mother.

Can Imogene follow in her dead husband’s footsteps and solve the cases?

The story comes in the first-person rambling from Imogene, addressing the readers.

What I Like:

There’s a list of characters at the beginning of the book. This was helpful as the story had loads of characters.

The cover is rather pretty and has Christmas-y vibes. The book can be sped-read with ease.

Timothy is an adorable kid. I hope he becomes a recurring character in the series.

For a change, the story has an aged and overweight dog instead of an excited furball. Older dogs need love too!

Dartmond gets a (half) Indian mayor, Mr. Rahul Banerjee. It’s rather surprising to see such little resistance from the folk. Also, remember, India was still under British rule at that period. A part of me is glad about this modern take. He does have a decent role, which makes me happy. But I’m not fully convinced.

What Didn’t Work for Me:

Unfortunately, a lot of it didn’t work for me. I’ll try to keep it brief.

Imogene is described as ‘a willy-nilly detective who talks too much and eats too little’.
Her talking is more to herself and the reader than to other characters. Her POV is certainly willy-nilly and could do with strict editing.

The book cannot be called a cozy mystery as such. Imogene doesn’t really ‘solve’ anything. She sits in the rented house, goes through the files, rambles, mops, falls sick, and tells us how she should be solving the case. The final solution comes from a couple of conversations. She just had to have them 100 pages earlier and be done with it.
 
Almost everyone who knows Imogene praises her and recalls how she helped her dead constable husband solve cases. Here, we see none of that attitude, approach, or impact. The initial reluctance can be justified as she is mourning, but there is hardly any proactive step from her side.

A guy who doesn’t talk for years talks long sentences after a couple of broken dialogues. Wouldn’t he need more time to articulate, especially when his condition is because of past trauma and even his wife didn’t hear him speak?

The story has some important themes, but they are all underexplored. The book can be cozy and still handle dark topics. That doesn’t happen here.

This book is more about introducing characters and Imogene sharing her opinions of them rather than having a real mystery. Maybe it should have been a novella. Imogene should really, really (yeah, two adverbs) step up.

To summarize, The Unsolved Case of the Secret Christmas Baby could have been a lot better if the execution was compact and well-planned. The book would work for some readers. Sadly, I’m not one of them.

Thank you, NetGalley, Hannah Byron Books, and Xpresso Book Tours, for the eARC. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.

#NetGalley #TheUnsolvedCaseoftheSecretChristmasBaby

***

P.S.: I hate to do this with an indie book. I read indie cozies and know some real good ones.
My best wishes to the author.