Six weeks after opening - after many months of renovations - Antonia is very pleased her inn and restaurant are attracting a nice client base. Then one of her guests tells her that many of the previous owners of the inn have died suddenly. Antonia tries to shrug this off, but then strange things start to happen around her. She decides she must find out who killed the previous owner, before she is killed herself.

There is a long-running program on Dutch television that is called Ik Vertrek (I’m leaving) where people are followed that decide to turn their whole life upside down, move to another country and start a hotel, B&B or restaurant. Antonia could have been a participant in that program; she shares many of the qualities with the actual participants:
- moves to another country ==> Antonia moved to another state across country, so check;
- is ill prepared and/or bought a property sight unseen ==> Antonia bought the property unseen and on the suggestion of her friend Genevieve whom she later calls immature, check;
- has no experience whatsoever running a hotel/camping site/B&B ==> She has some experience as a caterer, but mainly phantasies about how to run in inn, check;
- the property needs a lot of renovation work ==> check;
- the set opening date is rather optimistic considering the state of the property ==> Antonia had to move her opening date and lost the lucrative summer season, check;
- in the end it all turns out well ==> check.

Whereas the program on TV is always a bit uncomfortable to watch, a train wrack waiting to happen, the participants are usually so charming in their naivety that you actually want them to succeed. Not so much with Antonia. She was so sure of herself that at some point I started cheering for any mishap to come her way. Or maybe it was because she was plain dumb. If you’re five foot five and your ceilings are high and a lightbulb needs to be replaced, it’s not a joke if you ask a taller person with a better ladder to do it for you. That is actually a smart move as most accidents happen around the house when people stand on rickety ladders and over-reach to change a lightbulb. (The ladder, apparently, is about the only thing Antonia did not buy new when she started refurbishing her inn.)

I didn’t like Antonia much, didn’t like the side characters much, didn’t like the mystery much. When Antonia is changing the lightbulb, she manages to pull her self up off the ladder and someone moves the ladder. There can only be a limited number of people who could have moved the ladder, but Antonia doesn’t investigate (which is rather odd considering the tenacity with which she decides to investigate Gordon’s death). It annoyed me that Antonia never talks to Lucy and Connie about what it was like for them to work with Gordon. Another investigative angle lost.

In the end Antonia gathers all the suspects and other useful characters in a room and discloses who the murderer is. Where some clues are shared that were previously hidden from the reader. I always hate that. Particularly in a book that is rather overdescriptive.

I read an ARC through NetGalley.