**THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS**
How I felt about this book was a bit of a roller coaster ride from quite intrigued to loving it to not sure to hating it to quite intrigued again to pretty satisfied!
So, we start with two seemingly separate stories following nice little old lady amateur sleuth in Scotland (Penny) solving local crimes, to hard ass cop in LA bending the rules and endangering himself and others in his unerring attempt to get to the truth of his cases (Johnny).
Then the two get together as they both end up at a society wedding in a fancy Scottish hotel, Penny after receiving a mystery invitation, and Johnny following a lead on a potential perp.
Things get hairy scary with murders and car chases and shoots out (which is where I tend to get a bit bored, not loving that sort of thing) and Penny and Johnny flee to LA to try to get to the bottom of a series of ‘suicides’ which they think were actually murders. (I can’t help thinking of how Alan Cumming says ‘Murrr derrr’ in his scottish accent when he hosts the American version of The Traitors whenever reading about murders in Scotland!)
Then I guessed the big twist right before it was revealed (so it was probably engineered that way) and initially my heart sank. Not another blooming book where the story is not real even in the world of the book, it’s all a dream/novel/simulation/hallucination whatever, in this case a kind of augmented reality literally put-yourself-inside-a-book computer in your brain thingy.
To be fair, when it was properly explained, the concept actually grew on me, and I went back to being intrigued and I did quite like the ending.
There was a fun mix of cozy mystery, noir mystery and sci-fi and I did actually quite enjoy it.
Sarah Wray Writer 