One of my reading highlights of last year was Maz Evans’ Over My Dead Body, so I was very excited to pick up her second adult novel. That’ll Teach Her confirms her place as the Queen of Black Comedy Crime.
When a particularly nasty primary school headmistress drops dead of anaphylactic shock, speculation and gossip is rife that it wasn’t an accident.
The school parents Group Chat ignites with gossip and speculation, and a smaller group chat splinters off. While they want to solve the suspected crime, they also want to exonerate one of their own who may or may not have baked the suspected cake. Between them, they narrow down the large pool of people that hated the headmistress to four people.
There’s the put-upon and personable deputy head, who was looking forward to his boss’ retirement to claim the job for himself, only to be thwarted by her intention to remain in post. The long serving dinner lady who is part of the school furniture, but rumoured to be too expensive for the school to keep on. The feisty TA who has her own history with the headmistress, and the creepy school business manager who seems to know everyone’s secrets, but may hold a few of his own.
The mystery is mostly told through the parents group chat, statements and commentary from the suspects and communications from the school.
Maz Evans excels at creating compelling awful characters – ones that you absolutely loathe, but can’t look away from – but this novel shows even her likeable and lovable characters have a dark side.
The group chats are hilarious and so relatable to anyone that’s been in a large group chat. The parents are a diverse group, which causes friction and conflict. I love the snarky, witty dialogue, and there are plenty of laugh out loud moments. I like to imagine that the author had so much fun writing this, because I sure had a lot of fun reading!
I remain eternally grateful to be child-free and never have to deal with parent group chats!
Oh and… does anyone have this week’s spellings?
Thank you to the author, NetGalley and Headline for an advance copy of this for review.
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