Hello. Welcome back to The Last Page Tavern. You have arrived and survived to make it to the March Monthly Brew. How you doing? Take a deep breath.

You know, we’ve made it to March. We’ve made it through two months. And here we go. This is part blog, part life, all book. No, I’m just kidding.

But no. March’s book is Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson. If you read the little bio over at the Monthly Brew tab, you’ll see that this book totally just came out of nowhere. I don’t even know where I found this book. I don’t know if it was a best mystery books subreddit page or if I just stumbled upon it. I don’t even think it was nominated for a Goodreads Choice Award — let’s double check. No, it wasn’t. But it was nominated for the Australian Book Industry Award (ABIA) for General Fiction back in 2023. That’s pretty cool.

Right now, I’m seeing it’s sitting at about 3.78 stars on Goodreads with almost 175,000 ratings and 25,000 reviews. I have one friend who gave it five stars, another who gave it four, another who gave it three, and two people who have it on their want to read shelf. Actually, one of those friends — Emily — was the one who suggested our February book (Remarkably Bright Creatures), so that’s fun!

Scrolling through reviews, it’s… mixed. Emily Fox on YouTube gave it a 2.5, saying the humor got on their nerves. Someone gave it one star, calling it ghastly. But others are saying it’s a super fun meta mystery — an ode to old and new mystery fiction, blending Agatha Christie vibes with Knives Out. Almost 75,000 people gave it four stars, while only about 2,000 gave it one. So… not bad.

Okay, analytics aside — let’s talk about why this book is here. If you saw my Instagram stories, you know this pick was kind of a wildcard. I try to structure the Monthly Brew like this:

• One book from my backlog
• One book from a recommendation
• One book connected to something I’ve already read or an author I like
• One wildcard

Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone was the wildcard. And when I put the poll up, y’all… no one was voting. I think I had six votes in thirteen hours. So I made a little joke — “Y’all better go vote, I don’t even care if you know what it’s about.” And suddenly, 22 people voted for this book. The other three books barely broke 10 votes combined. We’re still small, but we’re growing.

Here’s the truth: I don’t think this book is going to be profound. And honestly? I think that’s a good thing. The last two months were The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue and Remarkably Bright Creatures, and both of those were beautiful, emotional, and full of meaning. But not every book needs to crack your heart wide open. Sometimes you just need a little junk food for the soul — something fun, something clever, something to pass the time with a hot cup of coffee. And that’s what I think this book is going to be.

Benjamin Stevenson has about ten books listed on Goodreads, but this seems to be his breakout. It’s the first in the Ernest Cunningham series — maybe we’ll come back for book two someday, or maybe this will just be a background book we read on our own.

Readers who enjoyed this also liked How to Solve Your Own Murder by Kristen Perrin, We Solve Murders by Richard Osman, and Vara Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Q. Sutanto — which, by the way, I just added to my TBR because that title? Incredible.

I don’t think I’m going to cry. And I know that’s a big thing for this little book club. But I think we’re going to have a good time.

So, my dear friends, why don’t you take a deep breath? You’ve read this far. When you’re done here, I ask you to sit back, take three deep breaths, and when you have some time today — go make yourself a cup of tea. Or coffee, if it’s coffee time. Just relax, feel your vibe, and then dive into the book.

Because we don’t know what adventure we’re about to get — but from the reviews, we’re getting an adventure nonetheless.

Thank you so much. Let’s dive in.