Attending your best friend’s wedding should be a piece of (wedding) cake, but not for Eleanor Dash, bestselling author of the Vacation Mysteries series. Because murder seems to follow her every time she goes on vacation and is definitely her uninvited plus-one to the special occasion.

Emma Wood, Eleanor’s best friend since childhood, is starring in the movie adaptation of When in Rome, Eleanor’s first novel. Emma is also marrying Fred Winters, a major movie star and Emma’s co-star, who just happens to be playing Connor Smith, Eleanor’s ex and leading man of the series.

Filming wraps and they invite the whole cast and crew to their wedding at nearby Catalina Island. There may be a storm headed their way—because of course there is—but nothing will stop their nuptials . . . that is until Emma receives a note that says “Someone is going to die at the wedding.”

Eleanor is a professional at this point, and she’ll do everything she can to uncover the murderer so true love can prevail . . . before it’s too late for her and the rest of the storm-trapped wedding party.

‘No One Was Supposed To Die At This Wedding’, was the sequel to ‘Every Time I Go On Vacation, Someone Dies’. Like its predecessor, it was a smile. Slick, knowing, clever, with shiny humour delivered through the fourth wall, making the reader a confidante. 

The first book had a book within a book mirroring real life as its central conceit, blurring the lines between fiction and reality, and the past and present to amplify the mystery and the comedy. The sequel built on that, using the same cast and adding a film-of-the-book layer that turned the cast and crew into suspects and added a bunch of Hollywood movie-making tropes.

For eighty per cent of the book, Catherine Black made all the layers deliver value while keeping the story accessible, engaging and amusing and keeping me guessing about who is going to get murdered by whom and why. 

Unfortunately, I thought the story ran a little long, taking me one plot twist past caring who the murderer was. By that point, all of the characters seemed like plot devices rather than people. I felt like I was in a video game rather than a novel, so I was getting bored. I’ll still read the next book in the series, but I hope the plot feels less like an exercise in origami.

I recommend the audiobook version of the book. I thought Elizabeth Evans’ narration worked well for amping up the humour in the book. Click on the YouTube link below to hear a sample.