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Having thoroughly enjoyed Jess Kidd’s Things in Jars, a gothic mystery set in Victorian London, I picked up this newest novel without paying a whole lot of attention to the description. I had full confidence that Kidd would deliver an enjoyable book.
I had actually forgotten that Jars was a mystery; I just remembered the delicious gothic feel and details. So I guess it’s not a surprise that Kidd wrote another mystery, this one a more “typical” murder mystery.
Our amateur sleuth is a 50-year-old woman who has just left the monastery where she has been a nun for more than three decades. There, Nora had befriended an utterly delightful young novice, Frieda. After Frieda left the nun’s life, she had promised Nora that she would write her letters, and so she did, for months. But when they stop coming, Nora decides she’s going to have to investigate for herself what happened to her friend.
Frieda had been staying at a large old home turned boarding house, Gulls Nest, in a small seaside town when she disappeared. Nora moves in to Frieda’s vacated room and starts getting to know the other boarders, without letting them know her true purpose in being there.
She has just begun to gather some information about Frieda when another boarder is murdered. So Nora, who has always enjoyed detective stories, decides to put to use the information she learned to figure out whodunit. Is it related to Frieda’s disappearance, or just a coincidence?
Bits of Nora’s past bubble up as she confronts unpleasant truths, and readers learn more about her as she learns more about Gulls Nest and its inhabitants. Nora is also slowly learning about who she is and who she can be outside of the life she’s known for so long. It’s gratifying and sometimes a touch humorous to see her discover possibilities for herself.
I enjoyed Murder at Gulls Nest (though I probably did like Jars more because I’m just a gothic junkie) and look forward to another: it seems Nora will return in a second book.
Rated: Mild. Profanity includes around a dozen instances of moderate profanity, a handful of uses of mild language, and fewer than 10 instances of the name of Deity in vain. There are several references to a past sexual assault, and there are murders but without much gory detail.
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*I received an ARC in exchange for my honest review.
