I received this book for free from Reviewer Purchase in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

More than a year after childhood friends Michael Linden and Holiday Poirot solved a headline-making murder on Martha’s Vineyard, Lindenis ready to start over as a freshman at Harvard—and, he hopes, to reunite with his old girlfriend, Greer. But just as things start to heat up between them, a friend is found dead in Greer’s dorm, Hemlock House.

The police believe the death is the result of an overdose, but Linden suspects there’s more to the story. The victim was wearing Greer’s clothes and sleeping in Greer’s bed when she died . . . and Greer has a long list of enemies. It makes Linden wonder: Was this a case of mistaken identity? Was someone trying to kill Greer? Is she in danger? Is he?

Nearly everyone on campus has something to hide—and some mysteries are better left buried. . . .

Short and Sweet Review

It’s been a couple of years since Michael Linden and Holiday solved the murder mystery at Martha’s Vineyard. Now Linden is at Harvard and doesn’t really know what he’s doing. Linden reunites with Greer and it’s been nice for both of them. When Greer’s roommate dies and the police conclude that it was an overdose, Linden feels like there’s more to the story. Linden and Holiday join forces again to see if this was just an overdose or if someone has it out for the girls in Hemlock House.

Hemlock House takes place after everything that happened in the first book and honestly the only thing that makes this book a sequel is that it kept the character names, otherwise this could have just been another mystery book. Anyway, Linden is at Harvard he starts hanging out with his old flame Greer and meets her roommates. After a party they find Greer’s roommate Bri dead in Greers bed. I think most people moved on quickly from this and went with the overdose conclusion because Bri was known as a party girl. When Linden realizes that Bri was in Greer’s bed he starts to think that she was the intended target and that the killer would be coming back to finish the job. Linden requests Holidays help and they start looking into the death and whether Greer had any enemies. It’s obvious that Holiday is the brains of the operation and Linden is just there, I really don’t know why everything is from his pov because without Holiday he’d be useless. If I had a list of characters I didn’t like Linden would be on it. Linden has the ability to say pretty awful things to people and then once they blow up he realizes that he’s gone too far with the things that he has said. He does it a lot, he often puts his foot in his mouth and you would think after multiple incidents of this and people telling him off about it he would stop but he doesn’t. I didn’t care for Linden and Greer’s relationship, he’s jealous and he sometimes acts like Greer is his property. The best part of this is when he kisses Holiday and can’t stop thinking about her instead of his girlfriend Greer. When everything is laid out and we find out who did everything I was okay with it. A lot of things were revealed and it made sense. The ending makes it seem like we’ll have more books with the Holiday Linden duo and I hope that we can have a dual POV or at least some character growth from Linden.

Overall, I don’t remember what I rated Liar’s Beach, but I’m giving Hemlock House 2 stars. My rating is based off of dealing with Linden and his horrible personality the only bright sides to this book were Holiday and the ending.