Review: Magpie Murders

There are times when you need to write a review immediately upon finishing a book, a gushing review that pretty much just states that said book is amazing and everyone needs to read it. This is one of those times, and Magpie Murders is one of those books.

There is everything to love about this book. It's so cleverly meta, containing a book within a book (and the book within a book even has its own reviews, author page, and page numbers), and thus a mystery within a mystery. Each mystery is brilliant and brilliantly written, with shocking, surprising reveals. The mystery within a mystery is an homage to Agatha Christie and that golden age of mysteries, and there are great shout outs and name drops to other wonderful mystery authors and books.

This is a book that reminds me why I love mysteries ("whodunnits" as one of the narrators refers to them as)--the mad rush to turn page after page because I have to find out what is happening next, the obsessive tallying of clues and possible suspects, getting lost in small English villages with brilliant detectives, a cast of characters both unique and so familiar, and that gasp out loud that comes when I reach the solution to the mystery and realize I've been completely fooled (and I love the book even more for fooling me).

I tend to get anxious about rating things-just how many stars to give a book can be something I go back and forth on, and in the end, I'm still not sure the star rating really accurately reflects how I feel about a book, and where I would rank it on my list of reads. But for this book, five stars is completely accurate and deserved. Go read this book, right now. I can't recommend it enough.