In this laugh-out-loud murder mystery, three women dating the same man band together to get revenge, but when they discover his body, they’ll need to solve his murder before they go down for it.
The body in the closet was going to be a problem. Kathryn Hu knew it. Yes, Tucker Jones was a cheating scumbag, and yes, she’d agreed to meet Olivia and Elle—Tucker’s other girlfriends—to exact revenge for all he’d put them through… But then they found him. Dead.
Do they look guilty? Yes.
Do they feel guilty for having wished him dead just hours before? Maybe a little.
But—solid motive and a crime scene covered in their DNA aside—they’re innocent. They swear.
To clear their names, Kat, Olivia, and Elle team up to find the real killer. But as they go undercover and lie to everyone, including the hot detective working the case, they realise that every person in their ex’s life had a reason to want him dead. Will they uncover the truth before they go down for a murder they didn’t commit?
Filled with humour and shenanigans, The Ex-Girlfriend Murder Club is a romp of an adventure
Kathryn Hu is a high achiever, a scientist who has been happily dating Tucker for the last few months. Things are going so well that she’s more than a little surprised when she goes to his apartment and, half-naked, walks in on him proposing to his girlfriend of 2 years, Olivia.
The moment I read the initial summary, the only thing that came to mind was The Other Woman, you know, the rom-com from 2014 starring Cameron Diaz. It just so happens that this film is one of my go-to movies when I need an escape from the real world, so I was really happy to be able to pick up The Ex-Girlfriend Murder Club.
Don’t get angry, get even!
I loved the way that the relationship between Olivia and Kathryn developed. This was every inch a ‘girl power’ friendship, and of course, this leads them to Elle, the third girl in the trio. Each of the girlfriends has something different to offer the friendship group, and the fact that they complement each other so well is both heartwarming and scary. They have vengeance in mind, and while it’s gross (dog do on the carpet, playing up to his phobias with frogs let loose in the apartment), they don’t really get the opportunity when they find Tucker’s body in his wardrobe!
Every one of them has a motive, for what woman who was cheated on hasn’t occasionally been heard to say, ‘I could happily choke him’?
Hilarity ensues when a wannabe podcaster who once appeared on a reality TV show decides to stick her oar in, and the way that she seemed to get such tidbits right while getting everything else wrong made me feel sorry for her, for a brief second. Mandy was the incompetent detective I am so used to seeing in books like Agatha Raisin and Marlow Murder Club!
Overall, this was a great addition to the shelf, the right amount of humour, the right amount of heart, but more than anything, it was like reading The Other Women with a bit of a darker turn (the scene in the film with the glass breaking and our villainous cheat ending up a total wreck still has me chuckling).
Am I sad that Tucker got his comeuppance? Not at all. Am I sad that it led to his death? Yes, it was pretty gruesome.
All of this essentially to say that I do enjoy a great cosy mystery/cosy crime novel, and this had all of that and the added bonus of reminding me why I need to watch The Other Woman again.
To be fair, neither that film nor this book could be classified as a traditional rom-com (though there is a more loyal romantic interest in both – Kat with the enigmatic and actually rather competent Detective Adrian Birch and of course Cameron Diaz’s character Carly, with Taylor Kinney’s Phil).
Throughout, I was kept on the edge of my seat waiting to discover if these three women were going to discover the truth, and I really wanted to know what it was going to be.
That ending though…talk about delivering a massive twist.
