Everytime I Go On Vacation, Someone Dies by Catherine Mack

This title is amazing. Truly, I feel like it sets the tone for the novel itself. It's a mystery with some tense relationships between the characters. 

This is a publishing trip, where multiple authors are on a trip to Italy. They are joined by a small group of fans that won a contest. They go to Rome, to Capri, to Pompeii. They eat yummy food and eat gelato. Ugh, I want to go back to Italy. It's a dangerous country for me because I walk everywhere and eat so much (the food is amazing) and then I gain weight. This doesn't happen in any other country. 

Title: Every time I Go On Vacation, Someone Dies
Author: Catherine Mack
Page Number: 342 (hardcover)
Genre: fiction, mystery, romance
Publisher: Minotaur Books
Year: 2024

Ten days, eight suspects, six cities, five authors, three bodies . . . one trip to die for.

All that bestselling author Eleanor Dash wants is to get through her book tour in Italy and kill off her main character, Connor Smith, in the next in her Vacation Mysteries series―is that too much to ask?

Clearly, because when an attempt is made on the real Connor’s life―the handsome but infuriating con man she got mixed up with ten years ago and now can't get out of her life―Eleanor’s enlisted to help solve the case.

Contending with literary rivals, rabid fans, a stalker―and even her ex, Oliver, who turns up unexpectedly―theories are bandied about, and rivalries, rifts, and broken hearts are revealed. But who’s really trying to get away with murder?

Every Time I Go on Vacation, Someone Dies is the irresistible and hilarious series debut from Catherine Mack, introducing bestselling fictional author Eleanor Dash on her Italian book tour that turns into a real-life murder mystery, as her life starts to imitate the world in her books.

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This the first book in a new series that follows Eleanor Dash. Normally, books featuring an author character are kinda...off. I don't know, but they tend to be not as fun as they should be. This book doesn't feature Elanor writing a book, she's on a book tour. Maybe that helps. I think it's because it tends to be an (accidental) author insert. 

Ten years before the present setting, Eleanor met Conner in Italy. They became a short-lived couple while Eleanor was on vacation and Conner claimed to be a private detective that was solving a string of bank robbery. Later Elanor finds out that Conner was far more connected to the robbers that he admitted and he's more of a con-man than anything else. 

Eventually, Eleanor returns to America and writes a fictional account of her time with Conner in Italy. The only problem is that Conner shows up to blackmail her because it's a bit too close to the truth and Eleanor never did tell the Italian police how involved Conner was. As such, she signs away about ten percent of her royalties to him, eventually bumping it up to twenty percent. I'm not totally sure how much money a huge successful author makes, but she's doing okay (fictionally) and Conner is making out like a bandit. It gets out that Conner is the real-life "hero" of her book, creating fans amongst readers. While creating fans for the book, it also puts Conner more in Eleanor's life. 

This is also a problem because Elanor's romance with another author that she has to keep at a distance is compromised by Conner. 

Eventually, Eleanor has had enough. She wants to disentangle herself from Conner permanently. She just has to put her plan into action. Before she can actually start, Conner comes to her with a conundrum. He feels that someone is trying to kill him - pushing him into Rome traffic, killing the man that saved him before, etc. He wants Eleanor to sleuth in real time in order to save his life. Eleanor doesn't truly want to, but Conner is still blackmailing her, so she begins to look into the incidents. 

Then, a body is found, someone from the tour is murdered. Everyone becomes a suspect, creating a interpersonal web between the characters. Eleanor needs to solve the murder and also find who's trying to hurt Conner before the Italian police decide to arrest someone (the Italian officer that arrives is the same one that didn't believe Conner was totally innocent from the bank robbery case). 

The endpaper is great. It's upside down on one side and right-side up on the other...which I hope it's how it's supposed to be, otherwise I got a mixed up edition. 

To note, there are a LOT of footnotes. Almost every page really. It's notes from Eleanor to the reader. I don't mind them but I was unprepared for the amount. It's reminiscent of Terry Pratchett in some ways, but it's hard to match his style for anyone. I saw someone say that the footnotes did not format well on his digital version, so something to note. Hopefully that will be fixed. 

I thought this was a little on the cozy side of the mystery aisle. It's fun and a cute little beach read. I'll probably continue the story (although the author did wrap things up so it could stand alone, which is thoughtful). I found it well-written. The humor from Eleanor is snarky, sometimes a little on the nose, but funny enough. 

It does take awhile for the murder-mystery to start. The first part of the book is setting up the relationships between all the characters (who seem to tolerate to outright dislike one another). Information is often dripped out in slow intervals, sometimes through the footnotes. Once the second part of the book begins, it goes a lot faster. Most of the action is there (as they're stuck at a hotel) while before they're trooping through parts of Rome. Eating gelato without me.