How to Seal Your Own Fate by Kristen Perrin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
**3.5-stars rounded up**
How to Seal Your Own Fate is the 2nd-installment in Kristen Perrin’s Castle Knoll Files. These books follow Annie Adams, who has recently moved to the tiny village of Castle Knoll after inheriting her Great-Aunt Frances’s property upon her untimely death.
In the 1st-book, Annie needs to solve the mystery of who murdered her Great-Aunt. In this one, she needs to solve the murder of the person who foretold that death, the fortune teller, Peony Lane.
These Cozy Mysteries are told through both present and past storylines. Annie is in our present, and our past perspective is told via Frances. The past we examine here is 1967, when Frances is being pulled between two men: the wealthy, Ford Gravesdown, and the earnest, Archie Foyle.
There is a mystery in the past as well, which involves a car accident that claimed the lives of some members of Ford’s family. We shift back and forth between past and present, find out the connections, and ultimately gets answers to both mysteries.
I’ve really enjoyed both books in this series so far. I feel like Perrin has developed a nice little formula, and it’s working.
Upon picking this one up, I was immediately happy to be back with Annie in Castle Knoll. I do love her as a main character. Admittedly, it does take a minute, at least it did for me, to settle into the flow of the story, the back-and-forth can be a little jarring at first.
Once you are able to get your bearings though, it does flow nicely. I feel like the chapters are short and punchy, and always left me wanting to know more.
This one is twisted. The mystery of the car accident, there are a lot of puzzle pieces involved, and it did get a little hard to track at times. Especially because a lot of my focus was also on Peony’s death in the present.
I did feel it got a little convoluted towards the end, but nevertheless, it was a fun time and I did enjoy how it concluded. It looks like we’ll be getting a 3rd-book and I’m definitely on board for that.
I appreciated how Annie has come to understand and relate to her Great-Aunt Frances so much more over the course of these two books. I also love her settling into her new life, and look forward to seeing more of that in future.
Thank you to the publisher, Dutton, for providing me with a copy to read and review.
I would recommend this to all Cozy Mystery fans, particularly those who enjoy a historical element in their Cozies, or those who enjoy small village vibes.