This Is Not a Game Audiobook By Kelly Mullen cover art

This Is Not a Game

A Novel

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This Is Not a Game

By: Kelly Mullen
Narrated by: Lesley Sharp
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Golden Girls meets Only Murders in the Building

MURDER

MARTINIS

A GRANDMOTHER-GRANDDAUGHTER SLEUTHING DUO

DACHSHUNDS (x2)

A GLAMOROUS ISLAND MANOR

Widow Mimi lives on idyllic Mackinac Island, where cars are not allowed and a Gibson martini with three onions at the witching hour is compulsory. Her estranged granddaughter, Addie, is getting over the heartbreak of not only being dumped by her fiancé, Brian, but also being cut out of the deal for the brilliantly successful video game Murderscape they invented together (with Addie doing most of the heavy lifting).

When Mimi gets an invitation from local socialite Jane Ireland—a seventysomething narcissist who’s having a salacious affair with her son-in-law—to a charity auction, she invites Addie. But Mimi doesn’t tell her that a blackmail threat from Jane looms over the party’s invitation.

Once they arrive, a big storm rolls in, trapping everyone in the mansion. And then, Jane is murdered. Soon Mimi and Addie’s strained relationship is put to the test when they must team up to narrow down the suspects. When another body turns up, the sleuthing pair realize someone else is playing a deadly game, and they might not survive the night.

©2025 Kelly Mullen (P)2025 Penguin Audio Amateur Sleuths Cozy Mystery Women Sleuths Heartfelt

Critic reviews

"Mullen debuts with an impressive closed-circle whodunit.... Mullen makes the most of her classic setup, playing scrupulously fair with readers while leavening the bloodshed with dashes of wry humor. It’s a promising start."—Publishers Weekly

“Mimi and Addie have plenty of time to pool their resources, question the boilerplate suspects, one-up each other’s brightly witty remarks, puzzle over a truly ingenious series of clues, and solve the murder. Oops, make that murders. . . Despite the title, this is absolutely a game from the first word to the last.”—Kirkus

"A wonderfully vibrant take on the classic whodunit, This is Not A Game tackles the locked room mystery with warmth and humour, serving up a crime solving duo that I couldn’t stop rooting for. After finishing the book, I was craving three things—a visit to Mackinac island, a Gibson, and more from author Kelly Mullen!”—Kristen Perrin, author of How to Solve Your Own Murder
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Most relevant  
In the US we do not pronounce words that end with an A with an R. I knew immediately that the narrator was not American and British pronunciations continued through the book. I find it very frustrating myself.

Use an American narrator, not British for U.S. books please!

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A warning for audiobook listeners, I had a very hard time listening to this narrator. It sounded like she either had an accent she was trying to hide or she was trying to create an accent very unnecessarily. There was also a lot of mispronunciation of common words. I would recommend skipping the audio version.

The story itself I really enjoyed. I live in Wisconsin and my sister got married on Mackinaw, so it was fun hearing about places I’ve been. The story was fun, unique, and engaging, and I especially loved the prohibition/speakeasy history included.

Very Distracting Narrator

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I enjoyed the story enough to look past the narrator. Her telling of the story was well done, but the pronunciations were so off it was almost comical.

Narrator not great, story very good!

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A delightful who-done-it reminiscent of Agatha Christie with a modern twist. Full of fun, red herrings and colorful characters. Great from the first page to the last! Bravo!

Murders and Mysteries and Mackinaw Island! I’m in!

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Good gracious! The narration of this book is awful! Lesley Sharp is a good actress so I just can’t understand why this is so bad. Maybe it’s a British person doing an American accent. Words are mispronounced, accents change randomly, the voices chosen for a couple of the male characters are just over the top ridiculous. The book itself is very enjoyable so do yourself a favor & read it instead of listening to the audiobook

Awful narrator

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If you are familiar with the Midwest American accent it is odd to listen to someone that doesn’t have a great grasp of it for the characters. It all sounds off and a few characters are cartoony in their narration.

Narrator

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What a fun story!! This is clever and captures the imagination. The writing is terrific.

The sheer entertainment was terrific.

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This narrator was hugely distracting. Many odd pronunciations and obnoxious character voices. I will choose to read over listen to books narrated by this narrator in the future.

Terrible Pronounciation

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This might be an okay (not great) book, but the awful narration is so distracting that I could not focus on the story. I initially thought maybe it was an AI voice, because so many words were mispronounced. But the narrator made the bold choice of brining in TERRIBLE accents and affectations. Jim has some kind of speech impediment. It was so over the top and obnoxious that it completely distracted me from the story.

If you do want to read this book, get the paper or digital version and not the audio version. And even then, only if it's on sale. But whatever you do, do not get this audio nightmare.

Do not buy this audio version!!

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The narrator made this book so painful to listen to. I actually started time stamping her weirdo pronunciations so I could play them for my partner.

I read she is British and maybe thought these were a how anyone would pronounce words? And the accents she used. Where were these people from? Answer: Michigan. But the accents that sometimes changed mid sentence were all over the place. And why did she choose to have one sound like they had a speech problem and another like an annoying cartoon-type voice?

And how many ways should Agatha Christie’s character’s name “Poirot” be pronounced? Apparently the narrator thinks three!

Ugh!

Please get a new narrator

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