Book Review: Murder at Marble House by Alyssa Maxwell

Murder at Marble House by Alyssa Maxwell
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This mystery (can we call this a mystery?) is set in the Gilded Age, during the days of Alva and Consuelo Vanderbilt, and reading about this from a fictional standpoint was okay-nothing to run home and tell mama about. This was a murder and a go willingly kidnapping all together, and honestly, it confused the hell out of me for some reason. I felt like this book would’ve been much better if Emma Cross focused on just one thing instead of just two things and connecting to it and trying to figure it out. Also her and her love interest just somehow click but at the same time it kinda works??

So basically Emma got a phone call from her cousin Consuelo, who was being frantic. So Emma goes over and it turns out Consuelo really don’t want to marry the Duke of Marlborough (which, when I did my research, she did),and her aunt Alva was locking her up in her room, keeping her in the house until she did (which, in my opinion, was bullshit). So Aunt Alva somehow convinced Emma to talk to Consuelo into marrying the Duke, but Emma did the opposite, telling Consuelo to live her life the best way she knows how. Consuelo agreed and the two went downstairs, where they meet a tarot card reader named Madame Deveraux.

Taking Consuelo’s hand, Madame Deveraux tells her something very ominous about her future, about not going to be with that man. Aunt Alva thought she was talking about the Duke, so before everyone went outside and have a reading done by her, Emma overhears Aunt Alva threatening Madame Deveraux to expose her if she tells Consuelo to marry the Duke (this is why I hate mothers in books sometimes-they pull shit like this) and once she goes outside and have a nice chat with the ladies-Mrs. Stanford and Miss Beaumont-there was a scream, and everyone came to see Madame Deveraux dead.

Of course, Aunt Alva assumes that her maid did it, but in reality, it was the fake gardener Consuelo…fell in love with, I guess, after not giving Winston Rutherfurd or “Winty” a second chance?? And the whole kidnapping thing was so unnecessary that I just rolled my eyes a bit and wished it wasn’t in the book. It was an okay book, like I said. There is some mygsongy when it came to Emma and her trying to get her name in the paper, and after what felt like a long time, she got it, but it was on the third page instead of the front page. But at the end, it was good, Consuelo married the Duke, Emma found out that the love interest, Derrick, has moved in her childhood home that she really wanted to buy for herself, and that’s about it.

View all my reviews