A Most Puzzling Murder – Bianca Marais

A Most Puzzling Murder is unlike any other book I’ve read before – and not just for the reasons you’d expect.

The big hook is that it’s an interactive mystery, with over a dozen puzzles throughout the text that readers have to solve. In the narrative, this stems from the main character, Destiny Whip, being an ‘enigmatologist’ – a child prodigy puzzle solver, who heads to Eerie Island in search of her biological family.

But the other thing that made A Most Puzzling Murder different for me is that it’s a kind of contemporary fantasy – one that has both magic and Sorcerer Kings, and Instagram influencers and Zoom meetings. I’ve never read a book that tries to merge magic into our contemporary world, and I’m not sure that it’s a perfect fit.

A Most Puzzling Murder is pretty dramatic, with all the characters very theatrical in their expression (and their apparent motivations, come to that). It had a strong Young Adult or New Adult vibe, if that gives you a feel for the tone. The puzzles are fun and well spaced, but I found they really slowed down the reading experience. Plus, as much as I want to leave my books pristine, I ended up having to write in my copy of A Most Puzzling Murder for expediency’s sake – no big deal for the annotation girlies, but traumatising for cleanskin readers like me.

Oh, and speaking of trauma, there are no content warnings in the front cover of A Most Puzzling Murder so I’ll give them here: the main character is grieving the unexpected death of her best friends and parents, and a heads up also for eating disorders and car accidents.

All told, A Most Puzzling Murder isn’t a gob-smacking read, but it is a fun and innovative one, and I’m very grateful to my friends at HQ (Harlequin Australia) for giving me the opportunity to try something new and different.

Read A Most Puzzling Murder on audiobook via Libro.fm here. (affiliate link)