What Happened on Box Hill by Elizabeth Gilliland

Item: What Happened on Box Hill
Rating: 5
Author: BaronessMom

Posted February 2, 2022 by BaronessMom in Blog Tour, Contest - Giveaway, Mystery, Review, Series / 1 Comment

I voluntarily reviewed an Advance Reader Copy from Great Escapes Book Tours. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

What Happened on Box Hill

by Elizabeth Gilliland

Series: Austen University Mysteries #1
Series Rating:

Published by Bayou Wolf Press on February 1, 2022
Setting: Louisiana
Genres: Cozy Mystery
Pages: 268
Format: Kindle
Source: Great Escapes Book Tours
Goodreads
Get Your Copy at: Amazon
Also in this series: The Portraits of Pemberley

What would happen if you combined all of Jane Austen’s characters into one modern-day novel?
Murder, of course.
When Caty Morland’s roommate, Isabella, falls to her death on Initiation night, Austen University is quick to cover up the scandal and call it a tragic accident. But avid true-crime lover Caty remains convinced that Isabella didn’t fall; she was murdered. With the help of Pi Kappa Sigma President Emma Woodhouse, Caty organizes a dinner party with the most likely suspects, including familiar faces such as Darcy, Elizabeth Bennet, Knightley, and Marianne Dashwood. The theme of the night is murder, and Caty has three courses to find out what happened to Isabella--and to try to keep the killer from striking again.

What Happened on Box Hill by Elizabeth Gilliland is a well-planned, witty southern mystery.

Was Isabella murdered? Will Caty find the culprit?

Catherine Morland

Caty is our sleuth, a member of Pi Kappa Sigma Sorority, and of course, a college student. She has an infinity for murder mysteries and loves to listen to true crime podcasts. Caty sees herself as an investigator, but does she really have the heart for it? I adored how she brought everyone together for a dinner party and accused them of murdering Isabella. She doesn’t quite have Inspector Poirot’s posh, but she did a pretty good job. Perhaps next time, she should ask more questions before calling them all together. But where is the fun in that?

I like Caty. She seems to have a real tenacity but needs a bit more experience dealing with lying people. Probably, just realizing that they are lying in the first place. Although she did confirm alibis, Caty could be a great investigator if she decides to stick with it.

Mystery, Story, etc.

The mystery is well plotted. I honestly didn’t put it together until the reveal. The story is well written, and the characters are perfectly flawed. I love the bit about how the culprit is lucky. The twists and turns are inspiring. Using characters from Jane Austen’s world but mixing them up is wonderfully done. I enjoyed the setting in Louisiana and the references to that area.

Five Stars

I entirely enjoyed the whole of What Happened on Box Hill. There wasn’t anything that I didn’t like. Great job, Ms. Gilliland! My rating for What Happened on Box Hill by Elizabeth Gilliland is five stars. I recommend this book to anyone that loves a good cozy mystery.

Excerpt

Before her body had even begun to decompose, Isabella Thorpe had been almost universally branded by the press, the public, and her peers as a slut. Had young Isabella lived to see her newfound fame, she would have been tickled pink, instead of the grayish-bluish tint of her current color palette. She might have been delighted by the sight of her photographs plastered across the media, even if her carefully applied makeup and the outfit she’d spent hours choosing proved to be ultimately less than durable. Seeing her name pop up on all multiple threads and comments—some sympathetic, but others making her the punchline of a slew of wincingly morbid jokes—might have made her giggle, because the internet was forever and she was, like, totally famous now.

Even the word “slut” itself might not have given her much pause, because wasn’t she always yelling that at her sorority sisters as they laughed and danced and put on a show? It didn’t mean what it used to. It was a term of endearment now, empowerment.

But not, as it turned out, when it was being whispered behind her back—or, to be more accurate, over her dead body. Not when major news outlets were discussing, in detail, the number of people she’d hooked up with during her brief time as a freshman at Austen University; and boys were coming out of the woodwork to testify she’d been the aggressive one, pursuing them; and the same girls who’d laughingly grinded with her only weeks before were giving “special interviews” about how out of control she’d been. Anything for those fifteen minutes of fame.

It all started out innocently enough, this frenzied piranha-feeding of Isabella’s reputation. Before the school issued a formal warning to the students about commenting to the press, Isabella’s roommate, Catherine Morland, was ambushed as she left the sorority house. Petite, wide-eyed Caty looked terrified in the video clip that eventually went viral, and the wolves circled in on her, expecting her to be easy prey. Indeed, when asked about her relationship to Isabella, Caty was barely able to stammer out she was her “best friend” and that “Bella” had been girlfriend to her brother James. (Both claims were later torn to shreds in online forums, in which people speculated why a girl like Isabella who had a “boyfriend” also had an active Tinder profile, and why Caty would claim to be her best friend when she appeared in hardly any of her Instagram pictures.)

But the moment that pushed the video into viral fame was when one of the reporters asked Caty if she had any idea what happened to Isabella. Suddenly small, trembling Caty went still, looking straight into the camera. “Of course I do. She was murdered.”

That was when the president of Pi Kappa Sigma, Emma Woodhouse—tall, blonde, and with a formidable Southern-belle glare—swooped in to wrap a protective arm around Caty. “No more comment, y’all,” she insisted before guiding the younger girl to the safety of her waiting Mercedes. Online, however, no one could protect Caty or Isabella from the ensuing media circus.

Perhaps in the end, even Isabella would have shied away from this kind of attention—regardless that her name briefly became the top “Isabella” in search engines in North America and trended in hashtags, too. The kind of fame she daydreamed about in her lifetime came through merit or achievement. Miss Louisiana, for example, or winner of a televised singing competition, or top Pharma rep in the Southeast U.S. Division.

This kind of fame? It was not earned—it was taken, and turned against you. Voyeurs, gobbling up every gory, illicit detail, just so they could teeter to the edge of danger, then pull back at the last minute. All the while reassuring themselves they were okay, this could never happen to them.

Isabella could have told them differently, of course. This couldn’t have happened to her, either, until it did.

Giveaway

Prizes: (2) Print Copy – What Happened on Box Hill: Austen University Mysteries by Elizabeth Gilliland (U.S. Only) and (10) Digital Copy – What Happened on Box Hill: Austen University Mysteries by Elizabeth Gillilan

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About Elizabeth Gilliland

Elizabeth Gilliland is a writer, Dr., wife, mom, and lifelong Jane Austen fan. She is a playwright (whose plays have appeared off-off Broadway), a screenwriter (with a master’s in screenwriting and production), an academic (with a PhD and a dissertation on Jane Austen adaptations), and now a published author! When she isn’t writing or grading papers, she is most likely reading a good book, binge watching the latest hit, working on a puzzle, or hanging with her cute kid.

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