Publication: 14th May 2026 – Macmillan
A luxury hotel in the Bahamas. A world-renowned writers’ conference. A killer on the loose…
Eleanor Dash can never catch a break, but she finally has the ticket to a relaxing weekend: an all-inclusive resort where she’s speaking at a conference for murder mystery writers. Then she checks in and finds a body on the floor of her hotel room.
Any one of the familiar faces at the resort could have been the intended target – or the culprit behind it all. Or perhaps it’s one of the other writers in attendance, who know all too well the many ways to craft a perfect crime.
Eleanor is determined to get to the bottom of the mystery and must do whatever it takes to get out of this weekend alive…
This book is funny, it’s mysterious, it’s pure chaos. There is a cast of intriguing characters, murder mysteries to solve, and addictive writing, and even though This Weekend Doesn’t End Well for Anyone is the third book in the Vacation Mysteries series, it can easily read as a stand-alone.
What I love about this series is as much the intriguing plots as the structure of the novel. The story is told from the perspective of the protagonist, Eleonor Dash, a bestselling mystery author, who talks directly to the reader, so that we are right inside her head, with her chaotic thoughts that not always stay on points, her large use of footnotes, and her love for Taylor Swift (no complaints here!).
The setting of this novel is the Bahamas where Eleonor is attending a crime writing retreat together with her boyfriend, her sister/assistant, her ex-boyfriend (also known as the man who inspired her first novel and then spent ten years benefitting from it), her former best friend/current enemy, her editor, her mentor, and her stalker. So, that’s quite a few people to have to deal with, and things don’t get any easier after a man is found murdered in her own room and Eleanor is determined to find out who killed him.
This Weekend Doesn’t End Well for Anyone was yet another enjoyable and witty read from this series. The author brings you right into the world of book publishing, showing not only the best techniques to write a crime novel, but also the importance of reviews, and how significant social media can be for the success of a book. The mystery is compelling and full of surprises and, on the personal side, Eleanor is facing old enemies and old friends, her sister is hiding something, but at least her love life seems to be on the right track. The ending anticipates a new fantastic mystery in the next book and I can’t wait for it!
A huge thank you to Macmillan and NetGalley for providing me with a proof of this novel.
Catherine Mack (she/her) is the pseudonym for the USA Today and Globe & Mail bestselling author of over a dozen novels. Her books are approaching two million copies sold worldwide and have been translated into multiple languages including French, German, Portuguese, and Polish. Television rights to Every Time I Go on Vacation, Someone Dies and its forthcoming sequels sold in a major auction to Fox TV for development into a series, with Mack writing the pilot script. A dual Canadian and US citizen, she splits her time between Canada and various warmer locations in the US.
Book After Book 
Great review, this sounds like lots of fun 😊
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