Cover image from Goodreads.com

Annie receives a letter saying she’s an heir in her Great Aunt Francis’ estate and to be at the lawyer’s office so it can be discussed further. When she arrives, she finds her aunt dead. The condition of the Will is that she has one week to find the killer or her entire – and very large – estate will go to a developer.

Annie’s mother is supposed to be the one to inherit everything and this last-minute change stymies Annie, but she shows up at the lawyer’s anyway. Great Aunt Francis was known to be paranoid and deeply believed in a fortune told to her at a fair in 1965 when she was a teen, so while a change in her Will is a surprise, it’s not unheard of.

Finding her aunt dead before the Will can be discussed is a shock. According to the lawyer, the race is on between Annie and another potential heir to find her killer before the deadline. The reader follows Annie as she reads entries from Francis’ diary and tries to follow the clues that led to her murder.

This back-and-forth storytelling is engaging, although some hand waving is needed because the diary entries read like mini stories, not actual diary entries. This detail took me out of the story, but I see why it was needed. The narrative style is easy to read and the clues are laid out well. I didn’t guess the killer, but when the killer was revealed it made sense.

The story is book one in a series and the ending sets up a few details of the series without making the novel feel unfinished, which was good. I’ll likely seek out the next one and read it too.