No One Was Supposed to Die at This Wedding by Catherine Mack Narrator: Elizabeth Evans
Series: The Vacation Mysteries #2
Published by Macmillan Audio on May 13, 2025
Source: Purchased
Genres: Mystery
Length: 8 hrs 45 mins
Pages: 352
Format: Audiobook
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The second in a witty, USA Today bestselling series following author Eleanor Dash as she goes from wedding guest to murder mystery investigator at her best friend’s wedding on Catalina Island.
Attending your best friend’s wedding should be a piece of (wedding) cake, but not for Eleanor Dash, bestselling author of the Vacation Mysteries series. Because murder seems to follow her every time she goes on vacation and is definitely her uninvited plus-one to the special occasion.
Emma Wood, Eleanor’s best friend since childhood, is starring in the movie adaptation of When in Rome, Eleanor’s first novel. Emma is also marrying Fred Winters, a major movie star and Emma’s co-star, who just happens to be playing Connor Smith, Eleanor’s ex and leading man of the series.
Filming wraps and they invite the whole cast and crew to their wedding at nearby Catalina Island. There may be a storm headed their way—because of course there is—but nothing will stop their nuptials . . . that is until Emma receives a note that says “Someone is going to die at the wedding.”
Eleanor is a professional at this point, and she’ll do everything she can to uncover the murderer so true love can prevail . . . before it’s too late for her and the rest of the storm-trapped wedding party.
Eleanor’s first novel, When in Rome, is being made into a movie and she is spending a lot of time on set. To make it even better, her best friend, Emma, is playing the lead role. After filming wraps, the cast and crew head to Catalina Island for Emma’s wedding to her co-star. And then we find out that Emma’s been receiving threats and that someone is going to be killed at the wedding.
My problem is I don’t like Eleanor and she’s the one telling us the story – in the first-person with tons of her internal thoughts, asides, and footnotes. Maybe it was too much? Funny and clever are good, but not when they become the whole point. Maybe it was just trying too hard. She’s self-centered and
We have lots of characters, all of whom are suspects, but there’s more theorizing about motives than actually investigating. And more worrying about whether her boyfriend loves her than the hurricane that’s on its way to the island. There’s a cop on the island, but she’s young and new and of course pretty useless. We end up with three dead bodies and having to work our way through each and every suspect until we get to the whodunnits. There were several twists and turns, including a big one at the end that wasn’t the surprise it should have been.
The funny thing is I’ll probably still read the next one when it comes out.
About Catherine Mack
Catherine Mack (she/her) is the pseudonym for Catherine McKenzie, the USA Today and Globe & Mail bestselling author of over a dozen novels. Her books are approaching two million copies sold worldwide and have been translated into multiple languages including French, German, Portuguese, and Polish. Television rights to Every Time I Go on Vacation, Someone Dies and its forthcoming sequels sold in a major auction to Fox TV for development into a series, with Mack writing the pilot script. A dual Canadian and US citizen, she splits her time between Canada and various warmer locations in the US.
Reading this book contributed to these challenges:
Makes it hard when you don’t like a character