Review: This Is Not a Game by Kelly Mullen

When I saw that Kelly Mullen's debut novel, This Is Not a Game, was a locked room mystery set on Mackinac Island, I couldn't hand over my credit card fast enough. I spend my summers on an island near Mackinac, have visited every summer, and have friends who live there year round. It is a beautiful and unique place and the perfect setting for a mystery so I was disappointed that this didn't really land for me.

Addie has not only been dumped by her fiance but he is taking full credit for the wildly successful, both in terms of popularity and monetarily, video game that they developed together (although Addie really did the lion's share of the work). Addie is unhappy and flailing, suing Brian and searching for proof that the game is at least as much hers as his when her widowed grandmother Mimi, who lives on Mackinac Island, a small, quaint island in Lake Huron, calls to request that Addie come to visit. Mimi and Addie have had a bit of a strained relationship over the ex-fiance so the request is unusual. It turns out that Mimi has been invited to the island socialite's charity auction and commanded, via a blackmail letter, to bid on and win a particular piece of memorabilia. Mimi needs Addie's support at the gala, although she doesn't want to tell Addie she's being blackmailed, and certainly doesn't want to reveal what she's done to warrant said blackmail. At the event itself, there's a large cast of characters, all of whom seem uncomfortable and unhappy. Strange atmosphere for a party. When a fierce winter storm comes through, trapping them all in the mansion, the hostess is murdered and almost everyone there had a motive. She is not the last to die though. With the weather forcing the police to stay on the mainland rather than risk coming to the island, Mimi and Addie decide to do some sleuthing of their own.

The plot itself is fairly complex with not only the murders, the blackmail mystery, but also with what is going on with Addie's video game dispute. The characters are quirky but only a small handful are fleshed out enough to be actual suspects. Mimi is meant to be an irrascible but fun character but just misses the mark and Addie is rather colorless as her grandmother's sidekick. Not connecting with either main character didn't help when I also wanted (and didn't get) more of Mackinac island itself. There was a distinct lack of the flavor of the island, perhaps due to the timing of the book (it is difficult for outsiders to get to the island in the off season, as so many of the auction guests must do), or perhaps because the island seems chosen only because it can be cut off from the mainland, not for its unique characteristics, or perhaps because the majority of the story takes place inside an elaborate mansion that could have been built anywhere (incidentally, the geology of the island is all wrong for the deep and forbidding moat around the house). Then, despite the title declaring this not a game, uncovering the mysteries, murders and blackmail, is in fact treated as a game, with references to Murderscape, Addie's game, helping to make sense of the clues rather often. All of this added up to me being disappointed and I wish I had enjoyed this more than I ultimately did.