A Murder to Remember by Brynn Kelly

SUCH a fun listen! Cannot recommend enough. Brynn Kelly (aka Bronwen Sell) serves up a delicious stew of romance and suspense packed with laugh-out-loud moments AND amazing, truly insightful discussions about perspectives on life and living that had me wishing I could get this audiobook in print to refer back to! (Seriously, if therapy was this much fun, everyone would be doing it! Just saying.). The story follows Amelia Bennett, an American textile preservationist who is on an ‘escape-my-life’ tour of all things Jane Austin-ish across the English countryside, but the combo of a painfully inept guide and an English country manor that turns out to be more pit than palace has her stealing away from the group to examine the rare textiles and tapestries scattered about the place with no apparent regard for their value. Along the way she falls for the Lord of the Manor – literally, when the backstairs she’s sneaking down collapse beneath her, depositing her at his feet. He picks her up and invites her to join him in a farewell drink to the old girl that is his crumbling ancestral family home and is being sold for unpaid debts in a matter of days. The two make their way through the estate’s priceless wine collection and wake the next morning in his bed, their memories a hallucinogenic haze of hot (and occasionally hilarious) sex, mixed with glimpses of what both are convinced was a body being carried from the premises in the middle of the night. As they try to piece together what happened on both the love and murder fronts, someone is trying to make sure they aren’t around long enough to remember anything. The ensuing race to stay alive and uncover the truth is dotted with poignant moments of sharing their respective traumas and techniques for getting through life, some good, some not so good. And in the process of course, they realize just how perfect they are for one another — assuming they survive.