Daisy Darker by Alice Feeney is a mystery worth your time. This is a "modern" (it is set in the early 2000s) who-dun-it with riddles, home videos, and suspicious characters. Daisy Darker contains red herrings, misleads, intriguing dialogue, and although cheesy at times, will have you hooked.

The beginning is slow but once the clock strikes midnight, the intensity picks up. There are moments of sheer stupidity where you wish you could shake some sense into the character and there are moments where you wish you could commend the killer and their ingenious methods of murder. Daisy Darker is a good pick if you crave a who-dun-it, indulgent characters, and appreciate Agatha Christie's works. This is a murder mystery worth an hour of your time.

The plot is inspired by And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie. There is a cordial event turned disastrous where no one can escape; the looming question is, who is the murderer?

In Daisy Darker, you will be asking who murdered Nana and why? The plot will captivate you and sometimes simplicity is all you need to create a good story and Daisy Darker executes simplicity well. The plot is about a murder mystery party on an isolated island and you as a reader must figure out - who-dun-it?

Daisy Darker has characters you will relish in hating. The majority of the Darker family are vile and watching just desserts be served is quite fun. It is also a little hard because they also have redeeming qualities and you may regret how eager you were for dessert to be served.

Daisy is a great protagonist to follow. The benefit of following the story through Daisy's perspective is that she is introspective and her demeanour allows you to assess situations logically to obtain all the clues necessary to identify the killer. The other members of the family are great supporting characters; they are wonderfully selfish excluding Trixxi who is too young to have fully grown into the Darker legacy and Nana whom is an eccentric delight. Nana is who you would want to be at 80. With good characters and a relatively unbiased narrator in Daisy, the characters provide liveliness to the story and help you not only figure out who-dun-it but also why.

I think I should reread Daisy Darker because after that explosive reveal, I am reeling with the reality that Daisy is a ghost. Please excuse my ignorance if you picked up on her otherworldly status but I did not, not until Trixxi blatantly stated she was a ghost. For goodness sake, please let me know if you discovered that plot point when it was revealed because I don't want to be the only one to have been shocked by it. I never assumed Daisy was a ghost.

I was seriously considering putting this novel on the Would Be a Great Movie list be not anymore. This couldn't be made into a movie because it would spoil the reveal immediately. Not only did I not expect she was a ghost, I definitely did not expect her to be a thirteen-year-old one! In overalls and striped socks. Her family murdered her. It wasn't manslaughter. They straight up threw her off a cliff and based on her eyes opening as she fell, Daisy had actually survived the crash and was patiently waiting for her broken heart to start again.

I am boggled by this reveal. Not once did I suspect a motive outside of the will and not once did I suspect Trixxi. I will come back to that. In regards to Daisy, I still cannot believe I didn't pick up on her ghostly status earlier. I attribute this to good writing and also my willingness to believe exactly what was written. I think all of Daisy's introspection, her demure personality, and her adamance as a volunteer made me believe she was a silent and often ignored sibling. I missed so many clues and it's ironic I never thought something was amiss because there were multiple moments where I thought something sounded strange.

For example, I couldn't fathom how Daisy earned a living if her job was volunteering. I assumed her grandmother funded her lifestyle - I was wrong. Connor not speaking to her was strange but I assumed Daisy had done something so terrible he preferred to ignore her. Those were the two moments where I was onto the author but I do not doubt I missed a lot of clues and I straight up ignored the two I did find.

I feel that I missed all the paranormal elements because I was focusing more on the who-dun-it aspect. Knowing this was inspired by Agatha Christie's, And Then There Were None, I assumed the first death was a herring and that Nana was behind the other deaths. I was partially right but that is because that was expected. I guessed a very small portion of the story but there was no way I would've guessed what else happened and I think that blindness was influenced by the fact I've read And Then There Were None and anticipated the story to follow similarly. I would never have guessed Trixxi's involvement or paranormal activity.

The plot is engaging and I like that the two people with common sense, murdered the others. Well - I guess they're now also murderes. The only part I did not get was how Trixxi was going to get away with it all. There are five dead bodies in the house. Five! Whose taking care of them? Is she calling the police? How will the deaths be explained? And, is Trixxi insane or was she righting a very big wrong? The ambiguity of Trixxi's ending is what frustrated me most about Daisy Darker but I enjoyed the rest.

I think this is a great who-dun-it that paid tribute to its inspiration whilst holding its own. It does have some limitations; the story is a bit stilted, there are unexplained moments, and Daisy's silence was a big signal to her ghost status and if you caught it, I think your experience with the book would be different compared to me. Daisy Darker is not a revelation for writing but it's a testament to what good writing can create with a well-done genre. It has a few rough spots but in all, it is a fun read and that's what you will get when you read this: fun. A Darker type of fun that is worth reading.