#benjamin stevenson

[haveyoureadthisbook-poll]

Have you read Everyone in my Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson (2022)?

yes

no

I didn't finish it

I've never heard of it

Voting ended onNov 18, 2025

[live-book-posting]

If the intro to this book doesn't hook you (and the intros are *slightly* different via audiobook/ebook/physical book which is amazing) then I don't know what will

[virgilean]

Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson

“If a killer is ever revealed and your ‘percentage read’ isn’t at least in the high eighties, they cannot be the real killer; there is simply too much of the book still to be read.”

[a-ramblinrose]

JOMP BPC || January 5 || So Friggen' Funny: Ernest Cunningham Series by Benjamin Stevenson

[dani-ellie03]

You guys. This book is thus far delightful.

[literary-illuminati]

2025 Book Review #43 – Everyone On This Train Is A Suspect by Benjamin Stevenson

I honestly don’t know how this series first ended up on my radar, but I found the first book in it to be enjoyably silly and mindless fun. Since I was going backpacking and would need some enjoyable beach read while well out of cell reception, I picked this up and – whatever its failings and missed opportunities – it did succeed at that with flying colours. I do not, honestly, think I would have enjoyed it much in many other contexts, but as fun disposable extruded genre product it did in fact fit the bill.

Following the events of the first book in the series – and the wild success of his book based upon them – Ernest Cunningham’s life has improved significantly. Dating the (now quite wealthy) former owner of the ski hill where it took place (and author of her own quite profitable memoir based on the whole serial killer thing), with a worryingly competent literary agent and a sizable advance on his next book – and even an invitation to the 50th Australian Mystery Writers convention, held aboard a luxurious historic train travelling directly across the continent. He hopes the event will be a cure for his crippling writer’s block and – as every other panellist seems to be trapped in a web of grudges with each other, and one of them drops dead in dramatic fashion – he does in fact get what he wished for.

So just as with Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone (the first book in the series), this is an incredibly self-aware series, more genre pastiche that relies upon ones familiarity with and affection for various mystery tropes to really land than something that can be read naively. Incredibly self-aware and, for me at least, more than a bit insufferably so. All the cutesy asides about how what a coincidence it is that the events Ernest is living through so neatly match the pacing of a schlocky mystery novel, the asides reassuring the reader that he is a fair narrator and this is a fair mystery, the listing of how many times each suspect’s name has been used to help you guess who it will be and – it starts to grate, eventually. Whedonesque. Worse, it just feels like empty padding.

Which is a shame, because the core conceit of ‘a bunch of hackish mystery writers who all hate each other are in some isolated locale when the bodies start dropping’ is one I find incredibly charming. But it’s a difficult thing to keep that self-aware a premise form getting too meta and tongue-in-cheek to take even slightly seriously, and I found this went well over the line. Not to the point where it didn’t work as popcorn, but it wasn’t far off at points. Each character felt like little more than a one-line improv prompt and a series of secrets listed as bullet points, there were simultaneously b- c- and d-plot side-mysteries that fit together too neatly and perfectly for my suspension of disbelief but were never that interesting in their own right, and all the smirking at the camera meant there wasn’t really room for any of the plot points or character beats that were interesting to breath.

Iwas going to say that the end result was like a lesser Knives Out sequel, but that’s honestly unkind to the amount of charm and humour Benoit Blanc brings. The better comparison is to say it’s like an inexplicably Australian mid-season episode of Castle. Now I actually liked silly mid-season episodes of Castle as I watched them, so I really am being harsh here. But just, god, you could have done the same idea here so much better. I can see it in my dreams.

This is very clearly a post-#metoo book, which I mention because it’s really the only remotely interesting theme or ideological stance the book possesses. It’s not exactly graceful (okay, no, it is incredibly clumsily integrated at points) but at least its heart is in the right place?

Anyway yeah, this is a fun brainless beach book that did in fact eat up a pleasant couple of afternoons. I really can’t say too much for its virtues otherwise, besides the fact that beneath all the winking at the camera it is a competently executed fair play mystery. I just dearly wish that, if it was doing this, it went all-in and was less surface level in its understanding of the publishing industry and that the psychologies of the different writers/suspects were allowed to have a whole second dimension each.

[noahsbookhoard]

📚November 2024 Book Review📚

November was a bit less busy that October and varies from jawdropping to very meh.

Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone (Ernest Cunningham #1) by Benjamin Stevenson

That one is definitely in the jawdropping category. A great murder mystery in which you have all the keys and the author is right there telling you to "go ahead and solve it". I didn't. I had fun anyway. Just as darkly funny as the title announces.

Wintersmith (Discworld #34) by Terry Pratchett

I think sofar it is my favorite Tifanny Aching story: she is growing up and that shows, she is more responsible, she owns up to what she does wrong, she is still whip smart and I never get tired of the Nac Mac Feegle.

Dracula by Bram Stoker

This count as a novel read since I completed Dracula Daily like everyone on nov 8. The audio drama version by Bloody FM production is so good and a great plus because some of Van Helsing lecture at John are really just too long.

Une belle vie by Virginie Grimaldi

I don't know why but I ended up reading 3 Grimaldi in as many months, maybe because they are rather easy to read, funny and generally have a hopeful vives even when dealing with heavy themes. This one is the story of two estranged sister who reconnect by coming for one last vacation in their grand mother house before they sell it. They rebuilt their relationship and draw back childhood memories, some good and some bad. The part where I got confused is that the author tries to tackle a lot of subjects (bipolarity, depression, domestic violence and cancer are the ones I remember but there are many) instead of just one are two. It was a lot to handle at times but a good read nonetheless.

The Restaurang at the End of the Universe (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy #2) by Douglas Adams

Book 2 is just as crazy as The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, but I found it a little more coherent, as in I knew approximately where we were going (a restaurant) and the convoluted adventure that leads to and from it made more sense to me than in book 1. I'm really excited for the rest of the series.

L'amant by Marguerite Duras

I admit, I don't see the appeal. The writing is good but not incredibly so. The story itself is rambling, I guess it was intentional but it makes it harder to follow. The relationship between the author as a girl and her lover at least 10 years older is very disturbing when judge by modern standards and I was a little put off by the casual way she talks about her brother's death. I must have missed the literary qualities here but I might try another of her novel later on.

La Dame du manoir de Wildfell Hall (The Tenant of Wildfell Hall) by Anne Brontë

I felt so much fucking rage reading this novel! It has some of the most heinous male characters I have ever read and even the main love interest has a hell of a journey to stop being an entitled jealous violent piece of shit. That said it is very well written otherwise I would have either given up or thrown the whole thing through the window. Helen, the main character is strong minded and brave, I loved her from the start and grew even warmer. I strongly recommend it.

Tw for domestic abuse and alcoholism.

The Sword Catcher (Chronicles of Castelane #1) by Cassandra Clare

This was an indulgence: I said I wanted to read less traditional medieval heroic fantasy and it falls right into it. It is good tho! I liked the concept of the Sword Catcher and the Ragpicker King amd especially how the two characters interact. I really hope the relationship between Connor and Kel is explored more too in the future books because the homoerotic subtext deserve to be more text than that!

Somewhere Beyond the Sea (Cerulean #2) T J Klune

I loved The House in the Cerulean Sea so I was excited for the sequel, but a little weary too. I was afraid not to find what made book 1 so dear to me. But there it was! The kids and their shenanigans, Arthur and Linus being their lovey dovey selves, Zoey and Helen are all the village had kept its newly opened mind from the end of book 1 and that was very comforting. The story is hard, the hate and fear they face hits a little too close. But they overcome it and everything ends well which is just what I wanted to read.

The kids calling Arthur and Linus Dad and Papa was extremely cute. I really loved David and how he bonded with Lucy. Not a comfort book as much as the first one but I had a great time reading it

My Roommate is a Vampire by Jenna Levine

I stumbled upon this one because I watched this video of a person who read all the Rylo fanfic turned novels out of morbid curiosity and this one seemed intriguing enough for me to try, open mind and all that. I was promised some whimsy, a shopping montage and a heist.

Well there's comedy (an kumquats for some reason) The shopping montage wasn't much of a montage, they just went and tried t-shirts on. But the end was just stupid: female lead went ahead with a plan she deems stupid and unlikely to work, us reader with even the tiniest bit of social media experience know that the plan is stupid and can't possibly work. And it works. Just genuinely first degree work. When you go with that in a comedy setting at least make your stupid plan work in a funny way, WWDITS style! Some bits are tedious, I understand your 400 year old don't know how to use Instagram but I do and I don't need a full chapter of tutorial (same chapter as my newest fight with my nemesis, the possessiveness trope, you don't get to storm off and brood just cause she posted bikini pics dude!)

Overall it was quite fun if you don't think to much about it.

When Among Crows by Veronica Roth

I listen to the audio book and the accents were *chef kiss*: it is a novella with slavic folklore creatures in an modern setting and I wasn't expecting to love it so much!! It's a story about monsters and family and duty. Angsty, a bit gay, the characters relationship work very well. It will be a reread in the future.Greatest of news for me today! I discovered by googling the spelling of characters names that a second book is coming this year!

[spaceorphanssecondbreakfastclub]

SBC Book Club : Everyone On This Train Is A Suspect

Title: Everyone on this Train is a Suspect Author: Benjamin Stevenson Genre: Mystery

Goodreads Summary :

When the Australian Mystery Writers’ Society invited me to their crime-writing festival aboard the Ghan, the famous train between Darwin and Adelaide, I was hoping for some inspiration for my second book. Fiction, this time: I needed a break from real people killing each other. Obviously, that didn’t pan out.

Review :

Okay, well, back with a fresh start for a new year, and another mystery novel I've been meaning to read. I really enjoyed the first entry of this meta series, and have been looking forward to getting to this one.

I really enjoyed this one! I read it in five hours!

The thing this series has going for it is that it has a really fun premise in that the main character is (somewhat) aware that he's in a novel. There are rules of the mystery genre to be followed and the fourth wall is meant to break, and a lot like the first one in the series, there's a lot of commentary on the mystery genre in general -- which I find a lot of fun.

The really beauty of this one is that the structure is incredibly tight and a lot of fun. This time around, Ernest is on a train with other mystery writers, each of whom all have a different style, and that style is explored in the various different sections as the novel unfolds. And while I think the first book was bumpier, you can tell that the author was able to make this novel a bit cleaner, and I think the whole thing holds together better than the first novel.

I will admit, it's not a perfect book. In upholding the style and structure, the actual mystery of the book is somewhat straightforward, and while not exactly predictable, the story beats (intentionally) follow a somewhat linear pattern that one would expect, which I do think holds it back slightly. I don't know that there's anything new outside of the meta schtick when it comes to the actual mystery, and thus the characterizations feel a little.... one-dimensional at times.

But that said, this book is a lot of fun, a quick and easy read, and an enjoyable commentary for anyone who wants a light and engaging mystery. It's a definite recommend from me.

Rating : 4.5 Stars