Magpie Murders is a mystery novel, within a mystery novel. It features an editor, Susan Ryeland, who finds herself informally investigating the death of the writer who wrote the mystery novel that is also embedded in this book.

The secondary mystery featuring Alex Pund is very much your classic small village cosy mystery. The majority of the story is told in one go a few pages in which I appreciate because I would have found it rather distracting if it started and stopped frequently. It was very immersive, and when the story did stop I almost felt a bit disorientated. (I also listened to this on audio which had a different narrator for the two separate mysteries). This was also necessary, as the mystery surrounding Alan Conway (the author of the Alex Pund series) is found dead, and Susan bases a lot of her suspicions on the coincidences or the parallel facts between Conway's life, and the people in the Pund story.

The concept is definitely interesting, but I found that a lot of it was a bit of a stretch. I understand that ultimately the book is more about the various relationships with the mystery novel, but I found that so much of the book was so convoluted that it took away from it and made a lot of it seem rather pointless and disjointed. 

The majority of characters were unlikeable and acted far too suspicious to make you spend time thinking about concepts more than it trying to be a clever mystery. Considering it is a rather long read, especially for a mystery, I found it rather disappointing, as I kept hoping for something to click like in most mystery stories. In fact, I guessed who the killer was in the Susan storyline rather quickly, and I'm usually to thick to guess who did it, and even more so, why. This resulted in me being incredibly frustrated with Susan. 

I have given this 3 stars solely because the Atticus Pund story was enjoyable as a standalone mystery. 

I went into We Are All Completely Besides Ourselves absolutely blind. The blurb hinted towards it being a family drama of sorts, and it's... not wrong.  

The story surrounds Rosemary Cooke, who retrospectively tells the story of her life as a child, and as a college student, before rounding up where she is at the end. Growing up, Rosemary was exceedingly chatty, and had a sister her age, as well as an older brother. In college, she doesn't say very much and those around her do not even know she has any siblings as they've been missing from her life for many years at that point. 

My spoiler-free thoughts: This book was absolutely heartbreaking and overall quite sad. The entire Cooke family goes through a massive change in their lives around the point Rosemary is 5 years old. Each member of the family tackles this loss different which also all significantly impact one another. There is rebellion, subdual, depression, alcoholism... with some outcomes ending better than others. 

Further slightly spoiler-y thoughts ahead:

The sister, Fern, is a chimpanzee. This adds an entire different layer and dynamic to the story. I am personally very sensitive to animal experimentation and cruelty and I found it very difficult to read at moments. It also makes the Cookes' family dynamic and issues even more complicated with this backdrop of scientific experimentation on both Fern, Rosemary, and in extension the rest of the Cooke family. That being said, it is this aspect of the story that makes it so unique and the book a very worthwhile and important read.

As for Fowler's writing, the book flowed really well between the different timelines, choosing to unveil things in the right moments to both clarify things and also raise a million more questions. There are humourous moments which help break up how deeply sad and difficult this book can be. It is grounded in our real world enough to make an even greater impact on the reader because you know you cannot dismiss the book as entirely fictional when it becomes almost too difficult to read. 

I highly recommend this to anyone who wants to read something emotional, beautiful, and absolutely heartbreaking. 

This is definitely a "bookstagram made me do it" purchase, but even before the pandemic hit, I decided I wanted to read books I wouldn't normal reach out for and this one was definitely a hit.

My own personal prejudices made me think this book would be vapid and rom com style, but it had a fair bit of depth to it and it was, on the most part, relatable. There were instances of things being a bit over the top with some characters who were a bit too much. This is not necessarily bad and did provide a lot of comic relief and without those moments the entire book would likely be very depressing. I think these moments of comic relief, particularly the scenes between Nina and Lola, are very akin to the schadenfreude moments that they use in their relationship when things are getting too serious or sad. 

There's a whole slew of characters that can be seen to span different stages of the stereotypical relationship and expected natural progression, and by doing this I found that Dolly Alderton managed to show that this isn't the idyllic sort of life that people not part of it expect. This was highly effective as having one character diss these moments in life would have just made the character pessimistic and unlikeable. And that isn't to say that the protagonist, Nina, is perfect. Far from it. Yet her being part of a large cast of different people provides balance for the reader.

With all that said, there is one subplot

the italian neighbour ugh

that I absolutely despised and think is unecessary. It's the sort of storyline that would be part of a book with a classic happy ending, which I have to say is not what is found in this book, and it feels incredibly out of place. 

Definitely a worthy debut piece of fiction from a prolific non-fiction writer. I will consider picking up more of her work in the future.