Death At Morning House (Review)

Information:

• Author: Maureen Johnson
• Genre: Mystery, Thriller
• Page Count: 366
• Year Published: 2024

Read This If You Like:

• Dual Timelines
• Accidental Troublemaker Main Characters
• Queer Representation
• Upstate NY/Canada Settings¹
• Mysterious Summer Houses
• More Atmospheric Reads
• Large Friend Groups
• Petrichor²

1. The book makes a big deal of informing us that the main location is right on the border of NY and Canada and it’s really easy for characters to suddenly cross countries without realizing it. ↩︎
2. Petrichor (Noun) Definition:
   1. The smell produced when rain hits dry soil, often described as earthy and pleasant.
   2. A thing that this book mentions a lot as a plot device in the first chapter, and probably has some symbolism that I haven’t figured out. ↩︎

Synopsis:

Morning House, located on an island near the border of New York and Canada used to be praised in the 1930s for being the ideal summer home. Over the summer, the Ralston family would visit the house and attract attention for how the father, Phillip Ralston, focused on educating his children, healthy diets, and encouraging the kid’s passions. But then two of the kids mysteriously died right after the other, and Morning House was soon shut down. Until now, when the house is reopening for one summer only for special tours. Marlowe is in need of a new summer job- she just lost her dream girl and her house sitting career through some very accidental arson, and what better way to fix her reputation then hosting tours of a house on a distant island? The plan seems foolproof, especially as Marlowe begins to connect with her fellow tour conductors- until she finds the secrets everyone is keeping, someone disappears, and staying in Morning House becomes dangerous.

Review/Opinions:

Alright guys, this is going to be a long review today. (Good news: I kept it free of major spoilers.) So get comfy, and begin to scroll through my various opinions on Death at Morning House, many of which aren’t the most positive:

I tried to keep my opinions on this book as optimistic as possible. I never want to encourage anyone not to read a book I leave a negative review for (part of the reason I always include a Read This if You Like section, the other reason being I really enjoy making them) because I know everyone has different opinions and preferences. But my opinions on Death at Morning House were… negative. Last year I read and reviewed the first 3 books of Johnson’s popular Truly Devious series (Review link here), and it was one of the most mixed bags I’ve read, with many strong parts but also severe pacing, structural, and romance-related issues. But I liked what I liked, and I really thought her standalone Death at Morning House would be a better book. Sadly, this was a letdown.

And the thing is, I really liked this at the start. I was engaged by the first few chapters, and then stuff started happening at page 200 that made me really want to keep reading, to the point of which I stayed up past midnight continuing to read. But after that point, everything fell apart and I became aware of a bunch of little issues that added up, and even more problems as I got closer to the end. Alright, enough yapping, let’s discuss what I actually didn’t like about the book:

After reading 4 Maureen Johnson books (The 3 Truly Devious novels I’ve read and this one), I’ve come to the conclusion that she simply doesn’t know the right formula for a good 21st century mystery novel. Remember when I said that stuff happened at page 200? Yeah, that’s when everything mystery related actually started. In a 366 page standalone, that is way too late. Maybe it could be made up for if the sleuthing was decent? Well, it wasn’t real sleuthing either. Marlowe mostly just ran around the house finding nothing except for one or two conveniently placed clues and then made a conclusion based on those. The actual reveal was unexpected and I actually was shocked, but I wished there were bigger twists spread out throughout the novel. (And just for reference, Truly Devious had this exact same problem.) Well, there were twists, but what exactly were most of them? The most “Ho-hum” level teenage drama that I simply didn’t care for. It was a complex saga of teenage drama- but it shouldn’t have had be so complex that discussing it took up more page time then what could’ve been spent figuring out the story of the creepy house they were in.

However, this is all based on the story in the present with Marlowe. There were also chapters that took place in the past and focused on the Ralston family and the tragedies that they faced, which were honestly the best part of the book. I felt like there were way better twists in that part, since teenage problems didn’t really exist in the 1930s, meaning it could instead focus on a really thrilling and gasp-worthy saga with plenty of twists and turns. Plus, the slow pacing was more excusable in those parts, though I don’t really know why I have that opinion, it just irritated me less. But after I finished the actual novel, I realized that the historical chapters had absolutely nothing to do with Marlowe’s story. The only connection between the two timelines is that Marlowe was staying in the same house as the Ralston family. She had no ambition to solve the mystery in the past, had no feelings that something fishy was going on, and only randomly found some random evidence permitting to the case that gave her the answer to what happened immediately at the end of the book. I feel like if the author wanted to connect the timelines better, she could have either had Marlowe have motivation to solve the past mystery and find more clues, or made the motivation behind the present mystery more connected to the past one. Instead, the author wrote two contrasting storylines, one pretty good and one I wasn’t a fan of, and smacked them together with not much connection.

In addition, the narration in the present day chapters just felt… clunky. It felt like the intention was to write Marlowe as a quirky, unique character, but the way it was executed fell flat. There were a bunch of unnecessary random metaphors that didn’t help to move things along, and they only worked in a few places. There were lines of Marlowe’s narration where it was meant for her to be talking to the reader, which got cringy really quickly, especially because a bunch of it was “I want you to know that I really didn’t intend for this thing to happen and I was very careful”, and it got annoying, because I believed that she wasn’t to blame without her saying that. And I can confirm that she wasn’t even intended to be an unreliable narrator, so what was the point? Also, she commented too much on her inner romantic thoughts and who she found handsome that it got irritating. The other characters in the present were okay, I liked the dynamic as a friend group, but the other ones were the kind that had one main personality trait and not much else. Plus, the romance was actually good and cute… but then got turned around in the most unrealistic way possible. (Since I also highly disliked the romance in Truly Devious, I think good, realistic romance plots are another thing Johnson is weak at writing.) Meanwhile, the historical set chapters actually had cohesive writing that flowed well (mostly because they were instead written in the third person), and I actually clicked with the characters in that chapter.

Overall, this book was simply a slog to get through. I wasn’t clicking with the clunky narration, slow pacing with limited mystery elements, and heaps of annoying teenage issues, and even when good parts actually occurred, the issues became the prominent details in the story. But since the only part I enjoyed was the historical-set timeline, I am starting to believe that if she wants to keep writing YA, she should pivot her focus to writing an entirely historical-set thriller, instead of attempting to write another contemporary mystery with modern characters and issues and missing the mark. (It looks like books 6 and 7 for Truly Devious are currently in the works though, so an all-historical novel is definitely not happening anytime soon.) If you can tolerate slower-paced novels and teenage drama, or like good historical sections, I believe this may be up your alley. But after the various letdowns I’ve had with every Maureen Johnson book I read, I don’t think she’s the author for me.