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Murder Most Unladylike by Robin Stevens
5.0

When Daisy Wells and Hazel Wong set up a secret detective agency at Deepdean School for Girls, they struggle to find a truly exciting case. That is, until Hazel discovers the body of their science mistress, Miss Bell – and when they return five minutes later, the body is gone. Now the girls have to solve a murder and prove a murder happened in the first place, before the killer strikes again. Will they succeed? And can their friendship stand the test? – adapted from back of book

Wow. Wooooooow. This is the probably the first true 5 stars I’ve given this year, because you know what? I couldn’t find a flaw with this book.

Okay so that probably strikes you as being full of baloney, but no, really! There was a great case (I’m proud to say I straight away guessed one of the mini mysteries, just call me Sherlock Holmes’ long-lost ancestor), great characters, a great setting… and, most importantly, great writing.
The one thing I didn’t like about this was Daisy’s character, especially near the beginning of the novel, but y’know what? That set her up for character development! Something I love in books.

Okay, so let’s get on to the plot – I’m not gonna lie, I didn’t guess the murderer. It was hard to, and I think that one of the main reasons I didn’t guess her is because of Stevens’ great writing – you just didn’t think of this character, and I’m trying so hard not to give it away so I’m going to block the next bit because spoilers. Basically, I did not think it was Miss Griffin! But how freakin’ scary did she turn out to be in the end?! SHE WAS TERRIFYING. And the poor old murdered!  I, for one, think that it’s unlikely Verity’s death was an “accident”, but I believe it was manslaughter – probably Miss Griffin pushed her off in a fit of rage, then felt bad for what she’d done, but still knew that it would send her to jail (to death? I know they still had to the death penalty, but according to Orwell the “done thing” was for men to hang and women to get jail time. Anyway. I digress). Although the whole thing must’ve made her a little mad, because she did kill Miss Bell and Miss Tennyson… hmm. I need someone to talk to me about this book…

All of the characters were so well developed in this, it was so great. I loved them, and I loved Hazel’s “case book” where it was in short chapters and different sections – the style and formatting of the whole thing was done really well. I loved the friendship between Daisy and Hazel and how it took its ups and downs – basically, it was a real friendship. Like, how often do you read about that?! (It was also awesome to read about friends having arguments because I am, it would appear, a rather argumentative person and this causes no end to trouble in our friendship group… Anyway, moving on.)

Basically, go and read this book. I don’t know how easy this murder was to guess (I basically just say open-mouthed reading it like, “OF COURSE!”) so if you are a hardened crime reader, don’t blame me if you guess this one straight away. However, yeah, I would recommend this book. I loved it, and I’ll definitely be buying the others in the series. It’s like Enid Blyton… with murder. Aka: right up my street.

Also I accidentally got blood on the cover when my lip started bleeding. Kinda apt? Yeah. (Also, oops. I AM SORRY DEAR BOOK!)