Satan Reviews- Books: Mistletoe and Murder (Wells and Wong #5)

Mistletoe and Murder (Wells and Wong #5)

Robin Stevens

Puffin

(Spoilers)

Fun times reading a Christmas book in February and March. Wooo.

I enjoyed this book, a lot. Robin Stevens is becoming one of my favourite authors and Wells and Wong is probably my favourite book series. The stories aren't predictable and the characters are compelling. And I don't think the pace has ever been anything other than pretty darn good.

This time, Hazel and Daisy are at Cambridge and they get to experience 1930's sexism and racism first hand. CONSTANTLY. Which, to be fair, isn't unrealistic. Woooo, old bigotry that society hasn't really improved on....
They are reunited with Alexander from First Class Murder and meet his friend, George. They all decide to investigate what they thought were just pranks and then someone's murdered. Don't you hate it when that happens? Hazel certainly does.

The way Christmas was integrated into the book was cute. The book would have worked whether it was set at Christmas or not. Christmas is awful for families; it's just fighting and murder and tension. Apparently. I mean there was tension and Daisy nearly killed her brother because he was buying into the patriarchal society and using a women who was better than him to advance further than her because sexism.

I had two problems with this book. Problem one: I kept forgetting who characters were. They weren't mentioned for ages and then the guy I'd forgotten existed was the murderer. So, I was confused who he was for the whole climbing pipe chase. Still not really sure who he was.

My other problem was Hazel's infatuation with Alexander. One of the reasons I loved this series was because it featured teenage girls without forcing them to fall in love with the fist boy they see. And what does Hazel do? Fall in love with a bland, American white boy. Okay, he's not bland, I'm just bitter about the crap that's going on in Supergirl and it is lowkey reflected in this book. I felt like Hazel's jealousy took away from the story and sometimes I felt like she wasn't jealous of Daisy, but she was jealous because someone else was trying to get close to Daisy. Bc they're besties for life. 

I gave this book 4 our of 5 stars.