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A review by lezreadalot
The Murder Next Door by Sarah Bell
3.0
‘What do they think this is, a conspiracy of women?’
This was fine. I wish I had stronger feelings about this, whether positive or negative, but I think this is destined to be one of those books that I just read and immediately forget. There was truly nothing really bad about this, and there's a lot of stuff here to recommend, but I'm just kinda underwhelmed.
This is a historical murder mystery with an established sapphic couple. It's a class difference relationship; Louisa is the daughter of a wealthy lawyer, and Ada comes from way humbler roots, and works as a sketch artist for the police. She and Louisa have dabbled in amateur sleuthing before, with mixed results. When the husband of the couple who lives next door is murdered, they soon find themselves mixed up in the investigation. The beginning showed a lot of promise, both with the investigation and the insights into Louisa and Ada's relationship. The middle part of the book dragged a lot for me. The women would often investigate certain leads on their own, and there was a lot of stuff that ended up happening off-page, even when those things were relatively important to the plot/figuring out what was going on. I never really felt fully immersed. The writing was just okay for me. This is set in 1912, but sometimes the dialogue didn't really seem to fit? I enjoyed the conflict with Ada's past and Louisa's morals but... idk. I do like it when, in mysteries, the sleuths end up getting closer to the case than they want, but I just didn't enjoy how it happened here. And the big conflict between legality and morality was annoying to me because, well, the answer as to what they should choose seemed obvious to me, lol.
Still, I really liked the reveals and the eventual solution to the mystery. It's not something that I guessed right away, which already elevates it above a lot of others in the genre. And I did like the characters (we got some great ace rep in here!), and I appreciate all the queer historical stuff I read. I just wanted a little more from this, I guess.
Content warnings: