Marple by Various Authors - Review

I had heard of this book on Twitter because Elly Griffiths is one of the authors inside, but when I looked it up on Netgalley I was too late to request it. So I 'wished' for it, which I've only done a couple of times before, but a couple of weeks later I got a notification to say my wish had been granted! That's never happened to me before! I was absolutely thrilled.

I was away in France for the first twelve days of September, and I decided to only take my tablet as it's much lighter than lugging a load of books with me, and it means I have access to ALL my Kindle books. I then decided that for the whole of September I would only read books on my tablet, as a bit of a challenge to myself. I started this right on the first day of the month, on the day before we flew to Carcassonne for our holiday. I read it on the two hour flight on the Friday and finished it later that evening. It is a fantastic anthology of stories and I reall enjoyed it. Thank you Harper Collins for granting my wish!

I have to admit that I'm not familiar with Miss Marple at all. I'm much more familiar with Poirot and his stories. I don't know all Marple's background and canon works, so I wasn't sure how I would feel about these stories. But the calibre of the authors involved just had me gasping - there are some I love and some I was looking forward to reading. They are twelve of the best women writing crime today, and I think Naomi Alderman did a brilliant job in putting the anthology together. The authors included are: Naomi Alderman, Leigh Bardugo, Alyssa Cole, Lucy Foley, Elly Griffiths, Natalie Haynes, Jean Kwok, Val McDermid, Karen M McManus, Dreda Say Mitchell, Kate Mosse, and Ruth Ware. I have to admit that I barely paid attention to who wrote which story, because they're all so brilliant that I genuinely didn't care. I was caught up in all the stories, finding them utterly believable and an excellent addition to the Marple canon. I am writing this review a couple of weeks after reading the book, so I will talk about the stories that stood out to me. I will say that there's such a variety of stories - a couple set in big houses, one at Christmas, ones with Miss Marple's friends, one with her granddaughter (written by Karen M McManus, which should surprise no one!) and one set in New York. Those are the ones I liked best, I think, but honestly there's not a bad story between them. 

I thoroughly recommend this book especially if you are already a fan of Marple, unlike me! Reading this would make me want to read some of the books starring her though, or maybe watch the TV series! I am giving this fiveo ut of five as I just liked it so much. 

This book was published on the 15th of September. I was provided with an electronic copy of the book for review purposes but was not otherwise compensated for this post. All thoughts and opinions are my own.