This week we are discussing Murder Your Employer: The McMaster's Guide to Homicide by Rupert Homes, Ch. 37-End.
Content Warning!!! This book contains situations and subjects related to: sexual content, murder/violence, death, sexism, suicide, homophobia, transphobia, racism, and pregnancy.
Spoiler Warning!!! This post is full of spoilers for Murder Your Employer: The McMaster's Guide to Homicide by Rupert Homes.
Discussion:
Michaela: Hello friends and welcome to our last discussion of Murder Your Employer: McMaster’s Guide to Homicide by Ruper Holmes. Right off the bat…I think I feel disappointed in this book. It’s not even that it was bad, because it was still quite good. It’s just not entirely what I was expecting and it just didn’t give me all I wanted it to be. The ending falls in that realm as well. I felt like I only really cared about Cliff’s story.
Jac: I was disappointed by the end of the story, also. The first section I was pretty into, but once they left McMasters it went downhill. I think the idea is great, but it could have been better executed. I can’t tell if this will end up being a series, or if it ends with Dean Harrow’s life. Which, by the way, was the most disappointing part of the book. I don’t believe that he would have gone to his death so naively. I was expecting one of the main characters to be killed, but I truly expected it to be Gemma. I liked that Cliff and Gemma got to reunite, but it’s not like we were given a love story here so I wasn’t exactly invested in it happening.
Now, what I did love and didn’t see coming was Lilliana Horvath being Cliff’s benefactor. I thought it was fitting, and was really a very touching thing between the two of them. It broke my heart to read about Jacek’s death likely being self-inflicted, but staged otherwise by his own design. I will say that I wish this book had a content warning for suicide - nothing is exactly explicit by any means, but as someone who has experienced the loss of two loved ones in the last year by those means, a heads up would have helped make it less difficult to read.
Michaela: The benefactor's reveal actually shocked me. I had suspected someone affected by Cliff’s boss’s actions but I was thinking Cora’s father. I didn’t even think about Jacek’s wife. That twist felt so satisfying, I loved it.
I also liked Cliff’s plan despite its incredible intricacy, which felt a little unnecessary. But watching Fiedler crumble, then turn arrogant, then crumble again. Ooooo that was good. I felt like Gemma’s plan was strange and I wasn’t following it honestly. I thought Doria’s plan was also intricate but her’s felt way more like a straight forward plan. Leaving men’s shoes and other such items behind to throw the police off a female suspect was genius. I both liked and disliked that all Doria’s work with McMaster’s meant nothing in the end but it also makes sense that something like that is a possible outcome.
I absolutely loved that Cliff and Gemma ended up being teachers at McMaster’s though. And her mother being able to come was the best thing. That was a really sweet part to the end of the book. I just wish we had gotten more time at the school in general.
Jac: I do love that they both ended up teaching at the college. It was also great to be able to get one more glimpse inside the school before the book ended. Give me this premise but make it a romance and keep it focused at the college and I’d eat it up.
That is it for this book, friends. We’ll see you next month for our Summer Book Exchange!