That'll Teach Her: One dead headmistress. Four suspects. Only the parents’ chat group can solve the crime...

The headmistress of a school drops dead in the school Hall. Apparently she had a nut allergy and somehow ate something to which she had a massive reaction and died. A school chat group doesn't believe this could have been an accident but has to be simplely murder.
The story is told through the use of the chat messages back and forth. It is an interesting way to write a book but was a a bit off putting for me.
The plotting is fairly simple and the storyline is as well. I's sure that this would appeal more to the younger crowd that is used to following life using this method of communication. I found it a bit annoying.

Claudia Stitchwell runs St Nonnatus Primary School, ruling with a rod of iron and ruffling a lot of feathers along the way. When she drops dead at a school event not many tears are shed. Initially it looked as though the death was a result of a nut allergy but when the death turns instead to a murder enquiry there are no shortage of suspects.

I applaud the author for having the courage to break away from the traditional story-telling mode and venture into fairly new territory in terms of mixed media. Whether or not it works is going to vary from reader to reader. Although I struggled with the format at the start, as I became accustomed to it so my enjoyment of the book grew and it is a very quick and easy read.
The plot is well thought out and incorporates a host of popular themes - intrigue, murder, secrets etc. All four of the main characters have a secret that they are hiding and these are revealed gradually as the book progresses. And then of course, there is a murder to solve.
There are also some wry observations, some humorous scenarios/dialogues as well as plenty of pithy one-liners during the course of the book.

On the whole though, I’m afraid that this wasn’t my cup of tea. In theory I understand why introducing mixed medium formats into a book could make it more interesting instead of just the same old, same old prose. But for some reason it just doesn’t work for me. Call me boring, but I found the prose sections were by far the most interesting and accessible. The most inaccessible sections were the Whatsapp messages – these “group chats” are hard enough to negotiate when you are an active participant. When you are reading messages from a group of people that you don’t know (and frankly don’t care about), they are tedious in the extreme, not to mention bitchy and superficial.
There were far too many characters to keep track of and this was a particular problem at the start of the book, which launched straight into a Whatsapp chat with a large group of parents. It was pretty much impossible to identify individuals and I had to give myself a good talking to in order to proceed. I was only successful because I made a conscious decision not to worry too much about distinguishing one person from another but just skimmed over the content. To some extent the problem resolved itself as the book progressed and the main characters came to the fore.
I have only read two other books that were written in this style of mixed media and they were both by Janice Hallett – having ploughed my way through both of them, I vowed that I would never read another book that was written in this way. I now have a third book by a different author to compare to them and unfortunately my views haven’t changed.

Whilst I enjoyed this book more than I expected, it is still not going to make my Top 10!! I feel quite strongly that the format is going to appeal to some people and not to others. The only way to find out is to give it a go.