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simoneclark's review against another edition
5.0
Thank you, Bookouture, for a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for my honest opinion!
You can find my review here: My blog post
You can find my review here: My blog post
kazza27's review against another edition
4.0
I was delighted when I was invited to the tour of the second Epiphany Bloom series. I loved the first one and this one is set in a museum of movie memorabilia and vintage costumes.
Pip is jobless again and her sister Flis is making a career out of her blog and is now an influencer! They go on a trip to a museum so that Flis can write about for her blog and whilst they are there, they see the iconic dress that Julia Roberts wore in Pretty Women to the opera. Pip is enthralled by it,being jobless and broke as usual Pip is very down heartened by life. Then she is offered a job helping to source original items for the collection, this is far from the detective job that she wants but she goes for it anyway and she is horrified when she find out the truth about the museum.
Will she stay and help Arabella who runs the museum ? She soon gets into slueth mode and tries to get to the bottom of the mystery of the dress and what else will she uncover ?
This is a lovely gentle and comical story, Pip is so unlucky everything she touches turns to disaster, she likes her flatmate Tim but he doesn’t seem to be interested. Pip is a really likeable character and I enjoyed going on another adventure with her.
Likeable, charming, the book has intrigue, llamas and kittens. A strange combination but it works.
4 stars ****
Pip is jobless again and her sister Flis is making a career out of her blog and is now an influencer! They go on a trip to a museum so that Flis can write about for her blog and whilst they are there, they see the iconic dress that Julia Roberts wore in Pretty Women to the opera. Pip is enthralled by it,being jobless and broke as usual Pip is very down heartened by life. Then she is offered a job helping to source original items for the collection, this is far from the detective job that she wants but she goes for it anyway and she is horrified when she find out the truth about the museum.
Will she stay and help Arabella who runs the museum ? She soon gets into slueth mode and tries to get to the bottom of the mystery of the dress and what else will she uncover ?
This is a lovely gentle and comical story, Pip is so unlucky everything she touches turns to disaster, she likes her flatmate Tim but he doesn’t seem to be interested. Pip is a really likeable character and I enjoyed going on another adventure with her.
Likeable, charming, the book has intrigue, llamas and kittens. A strange combination but it works.
4 stars ****
hstorkel's review against another edition
4.0
A fun little cozy with a quirky main character. A nice change of pace.
lunox's review against another edition
funny
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
2.75
Hmmm. The murder mystery part is not the primary focus of this book. It takes half an hour to introduce the mystery, and after 50 minutes I was pretty sure I knew who had done it. (tiny spoiler) <There is a murder as advertised, halfway through the book... But this get no focus whatsoever.> But it feels like an okay set up, but the first big confrontation in the end was just meh. Not at all satisfying and the confronted character felt inconsistent. And after that, the main character got kinda dumb for some reason? But she was self aware like “oh this is a very bad idea and here is a better idea but let's go with the worse idea anyway”. and the final confrontation felt kinda stupid. and like all the "twists'' was rather visible beforehand ex. <after the first confrontation the other character has a buyer for the dress that they have to turn away cause the other character is good now actually. But before the buyer comes so they can tell him it’s over they get the dress so it’s in the museum and then only the other character goes to tell the buyer to go away and obviously he gets upset and is most likely the murder purely because no other candidate for that position exists so yes he steals the dress obviously.> I don't know it felt very manufactured tension at times. Oh and the bad guy ye he is actually super bad. Like super super bad and these amateurs who don't know what they are doing just happen to get on top? If the bad guy was just an amateur too, sure everyone is bad and somehow they won. <But he has a gun, has our protagonist tied up in a storage unit and has done this for years and still becomes a scoobydoo villain and gets defeated. Like when he gets defeated in his storage unit filled to the brim with stolen gods he says (paraphrasing) "you are trespassing, you will hear from my lawyers. This will cost you millions." ????? Also also they have for some reason kept the police out of it. In the beginning I guess I understand why but the reason gets flimsier and flimsier and then after the whole thing they call the police anyways so like why not call before we follow a murderer into a lonely storage unit with fake cash??>
Also on a completely different note, I wasn't a fan of the humor... There is a running gag that she has lost a billion different jobs in spectacular ways and she thinks "well that hamster clothing accident could have happened to anyone." and like it’s kinda funny the first time around. But after 10 times it feels hollow. Like the author just trying to come up with odd jobs and odder ways to get fired. There is also a B-plot about <llamas that has no bearing on anything at all. This is also a bit frustrating because this connects to the A-plot for a bit. She is surveilling the main suspect and runs into her dad (famous millionaire) and they chat for a bit. Her llama problem comes up and he offers to help out. And then he does. and that was that basically. She doesn't get more insight on the main suspect, they just kinda talk for a second and then this obscure llama thing happens and it doesn't affect anything and> it feels like a "oh look how quirky her life is". Actually a lot feels like "Oh isn't she quirky" but more as flashbacks, her personality isn't actually very quirky when it comes to it. She is kinda bland that makes it odd she supposedly fits so poorly into society because she does work and tries and the backstory doesn't add up to the person presented.
nesshawk's review
funny
lighthearted
mysterious
relaxing
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
nickmay's review
adventurous
funny
lighthearted
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
2.75
melaniesreads's review against another edition
4.0
This is book 2 in the Epiphany Bloom mystery series but can be read as a standalone.
Let me start my review by saying I love Pip, and this series introduced me to the wonderful world of cozy crime mysteries.
Having yet again been fired due to a slight error on her background check, Pip is off for an interview at the Museum of movie memorabilia. Not your normal stuffy antiquated museum this one’s specialty is celebrity where the centrepiece is none other than the red dress worn in Pretty Woman. Spotting it’s a fake, and with her experience from the detective agency she’s just been sacked from, she’s quickly on the case to recover the original.
Pip’s life takes her bumbling from one disaster to the next and it makes for wonderful comedic escapades. With an eccentric, colourful cast of supportive characters causing her even more problems this is a book guaranteed to make you smile.
For animal lovers there’s not just the return of cat Most but kittens and llamas too. For romance lovers two potential interests and for crime lovers not only a mystery but a murder too. Something for everyone.
Let me start my review by saying I love Pip, and this series introduced me to the wonderful world of cozy crime mysteries.
Having yet again been fired due to a slight error on her background check, Pip is off for an interview at the Museum of movie memorabilia. Not your normal stuffy antiquated museum this one’s specialty is celebrity where the centrepiece is none other than the red dress worn in Pretty Woman. Spotting it’s a fake, and with her experience from the detective agency she’s just been sacked from, she’s quickly on the case to recover the original.
Pip’s life takes her bumbling from one disaster to the next and it makes for wonderful comedic escapades. With an eccentric, colourful cast of supportive characters causing her even more problems this is a book guaranteed to make you smile.
For animal lovers there’s not just the return of cat Most but kittens and llamas too. For romance lovers two potential interests and for crime lovers not only a mystery but a murder too. Something for everyone.
rk_reads's review
Wow...I never imagined using the words 'absolutely hilarious' and 'murder mystery' to describe the same novel. But that day too has come, people. The Museum Murder is a cozy mystery and a laugh riot rolled into one.
Newly out of a job, Epiphany 'Pip' Bloom is unexpectedly thrust into a new case involving a missing dress from the Museum of Movie Memorabilia and Vintage Clothing. Using the training from her previous job as a private detective, Pip goes about deftly interviewing and ruling out possible suspects from among the museum staff. She soon realises that the world of vintage clothing is a rather cut throat business when one of her contacts turn up dead.
This was such a refreshing read. Pip's witty inner monologues and her sister Flis's mangled vocabulary had me snorting in laughter.
Add to this, her mother's llama drama and it was just downright funny. Though I did think the author was trying too hard with the character of Henreitta butchering Pip's name. That was almost too similar to Flis's vocabulary mess-ups.
Overall, a fun read. The mystery was solved pretty quickly and the ending was a comedy of errors.
Thanks to Netgalley and Bookouture for providing a digital copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.
Newly out of a job, Epiphany 'Pip' Bloom is unexpectedly thrust into a new case involving a missing dress from the Museum of Movie Memorabilia and Vintage Clothing. Using the training from her previous job as a private detective, Pip goes about deftly interviewing and ruling out possible suspects from among the museum staff. She soon realises that the world of vintage clothing is a rather cut throat business when one of her contacts turn up dead.
This was such a refreshing read. Pip's witty inner monologues and her sister Flis's mangled vocabulary had me snorting in laughter.
Add to this, her mother's llama drama and it was just downright funny. Though I did think the author was trying too hard with the character of Henreitta butchering Pip's name. That was almost too similar to Flis's vocabulary mess-ups.
Overall, a fun read. The mystery was solved pretty quickly and the ending was a comedy of errors.
Thanks to Netgalley and Bookouture for providing a digital copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.
oldsimoneaccount's review
5.0
Thank you, Bookouture, for a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for my honest opinion!
You can find my review here: My blog post
You can find my review here: My blog post
lovesbooksandtea's review
3.0
[Thanks to NetGalley and Bookouture for gifting me an eARC in exchange for an honest review.]
Epiphany “Pip” Bloom is a mistake-prone Londoner who just wants to find a job she’s good at and ideally not get fired. She stumbles into her latest employment while visiting a memorabilia museum in London, but there’s a catch. On paper, she’s a buyer, responsible for sourcing new displays for the museum, but in reality, she must also find a missing dress worth thousands of pounds. And when someone turns up dead, Pip knows she has to solve the mystery before it’s too late.
On the plus side, the characters are fun and the novel itself is very well written. As with most cozy mysteries, the murder happens off-screen and the story is more focused on the quirky cast of characters than on creating suspense. I’m a little torn on this one because ultimately the mystery was good and it had a nice little twist at the end but some of the inciting incidents were completely unbelievable and pulled me out of the story. As well, the actual murder felt like a bit of an afterthought, which was confusing considering the book's title.
Overall, I would recommend this book to anyone who is in the mood for a very light-hearted cozy mystery.
Epiphany “Pip” Bloom is a mistake-prone Londoner who just wants to find a job she’s good at and ideally not get fired. She stumbles into her latest employment while visiting a memorabilia museum in London, but there’s a catch. On paper, she’s a buyer, responsible for sourcing new displays for the museum, but in reality, she must also find a missing dress worth thousands of pounds. And when someone turns up dead, Pip knows she has to solve the mystery before it’s too late.
On the plus side, the characters are fun and the novel itself is very well written. As with most cozy mysteries, the murder happens off-screen and the story is more focused on the quirky cast of characters than on creating suspense. I’m a little torn on this one because ultimately the mystery was good and it had a nice little twist at the end but some of the inciting incidents were completely unbelievable and pulled me out of the story.
Spoiler
Things like forgetting to renew insurance policies and museums doing poorly in a major city like London read like plot devices.Overall, I would recommend this book to anyone who is in the mood for a very light-hearted cozy mystery.