The Weekend Doesn't End Well for Anyone by Catherine Mack Narrator: Elizabeth Evans
Series: The Vacation Mysteries #3
Published by Macmillan Audio on April 28, 2026
Source: NetGalley
Genres: Cozy Mystery
Length: 9 hrs 12 mins
Pages: 351
Format: Audiobook
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The third in the witty and captivating series following bestselling author Eleanor Dash, who once again has to swap her sun hat for her detective hat, when a body is found at a murder mystery writing conference in the Bahamas.
Eleanor Dash can never catch a break. Not only has she had to solve two real-life murder plots in the past year, but both times it was when she was meant to be on vacation. Now she’s finally got a ticket to a relaxing weekend—an all-inclusive resort at the Bahamas where she’s speaking at a conference for murder mystery writers—but she arrives to find a body on the floor of her hotel room. Because of course she does.
With plenty of familiar faces at the resort, any one of them could have been the intended target or the culprit behind it all. Was it Oliver Forrest, Eleanor’s dashing boyfriend who’s in danger of getting dropped by his publisher because his sales are dwindling? Or Connor Smith, Eleanor’s infuriating ex-lover-turned-bestselling-rom-com-author with a sordid past of his own? Or her sister Harper, whose own stilted writing career has been a sore point for years as Eleanor’s has soared? Perhaps it’s one of the other writers also in attendance, as friends, frenemies and foes from Eleanor’s past all seem to be invited to the island.
Surrounded by mystery writers who know all too well the many ways to craft the perfect crime, Eleanor is determined to get to the bottom of the mystery and do whatever it takes to get out of this weekend alive.
Eleanor is attending a writer’s conference in the Bahamas, with all the usual folks, and the first thing she finds is, of course, a dead body. This Weekend Doesn’t End Well for Anyone is the third in the series and has a ton of returning characters, so you might be better off to read them in order.
I find this series both entertaining and annoying. Eleanor is not the most likeable main character. Most of the attendees at the conference have a grudge against her of some kind, which actually seems reasonable. She’s rather self-centered and jumps to conclusions easily. The story is told from her point of view but the schtick is that she constantly breaks the fourth wall and loves footnotes. I will say that both of those work really well in the audio version, presuming her whole personality and attitude doesn’t bother you too much. The footnotes you can’t even tell are footnotes, they just blend into the rest of the narration. The narrator does a great job of bringing Eleanor’s personality out and manages to give the many member of the supporting cast their own voices.
The mystery is rather convoluted and pulled in a bunch of strings from the previous installments and I was a little lost at times. I was also lost in some of the pop culture references. I don’t know any Taylor Swift songs and am never on TikTok.
I found the wrap-up sad and a bit of a let down. The end did give us the set-up for the next in the series, though, which I’ll probably end up listening to and complaining about.
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.
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