Book: Cross Your Heart and Hope He Dies

Author: Jenny Elder Moke 

Thank you, NetGalley and Macmillan Audio, for an advanced audio copy. 

Cross Your Heart and Hope He Dies is a book with a fun, well-written story full of very clever twists and turns, but I find it so hard to be invested because the main character is just insufferable. 

The summary says the book is full of rich people behaving badly. The main character, Juliette, is not part of that, and I felt as the reader that we are supposed to like her, but I don’t know why. I like books by Emma Rosenblum, which are usually about rich people behaving badly, but those come across as books where you should hate the characters, and it’s fun to hate them. I just never felt any connection to Juliette, so while I liked the mystery, I did not care about anything Juliette was up to. 

The mystery revolved around Warren Ellingham. Warren had a book deal with Juliette for his memoir, which was promised to expose many rich and powerful people’s secrets. This made Warren a target, and when he is killed, it’s first ruled as natural causes, leading to an entertaining investigation. 

I wish the main character were as good as the investigation; then this book would be perfect.

Final Score: 3/5