Well it was ok, not very heavy on the mystery, but maybe I was distracted by this description of Racine as a rundown small town on the prairie. ( )

The Undertaker's Daughter is definitely something completely different from what I had expected when it comes to a Sara Blaedel book. For one thing, it did not feel like a thriller, more a mystery book. And, despite the serious subject did the book feel a lot more humorous than I had expected. You know the sad kind of humor when everything goes wrong, but in a funny kind of way. Like in this book when Ilka is out shopping for a coffin when the coffin that ass ordered wouldn't be delivered because of debts.

The book is, despite the lack of suspense still good. I breezed through the book and I found the book fascinating to read when it came to the difference between funerals in the United States and in Scandinavia. This is a book that does not answer all the questions, there is a cliffhanger in the end and I will definitely read the next book to know what will happen to the funeral home, and to find out more about Sister Eileen who seems very mysterious.

As for the unsolved murder, this is actually the books weakest point in my opinion. It's not like Ilka does much to solve the cold case, it's more that everything happens around the dead body that is found. Ilka is more a bystander than an active solver of the murder.

The best part of this book is definitely everything concerning the funeral home, Ilka trying to get to grips with her father's legacy and it will be interesting to read the next book to see what happens next.

I want to thank Grand Central Publishing for providing me with a free copy through NetGalley for an honest review! ( )

I'm not sure why this was on my "want to read" list, I think it was because you learn about undertaking in the course of the novel. I'm sorry to say that those parts were mostly boring. I know that the author is going to take this character and turn her into a series but I didn't like the main character at all. The amount of times she just didn't listen, went to sleep or just shut the door on reality was irritating. ( )

I read this book to the end in hopes that at some point I'd get an explanation for why it was written in the first place. The story was promising but it never turned into anything even remotely interesting. Ugh. ( )

With a slight mystery element, The Undertaker's Daughter by Sara Blaedel is an interesting novel about a Danish woman who unexpectedly inherits a funeral home in Wisconsin from her estranged father.

Forty year old Ilka Nichols Jensen is shocked to learn her father who abandoned her over thirty years ago has included her in his will. Ignoring her mother's advice to remain uninvolved with the inheritance, Ilka quickly heads to Wisconsin hoping to learn more about her dad but instead discovers the funeral home is in dire financial straits. With the help of Artie Sovino and Sister Eileen O'Connor, Ilka jumps right into planning funerals while trying to decide what she should do with the business.

Ilka is a bit of an inconsistent character as she tries to decide the future of the funeral home. One minute she is prepared to stay and the very next minute she is ready to book her return flight to Denmark. At the same time, Ilka is trying to understand why her father abandoned her and her mother and she is hoping to find answers among his belongings and the business.

Ilka's memories of her father are somewhat hazy and fleeting and seem to center around her dad's love of horse racing and his gambling at the racetrack. She only has the vaguest of clues about the events surrounding his move and her memories are filtered through her mother's animosity over the situation he left them in. Although Ilka gleans a few clues about his life in the US, she is puzzled by the information she has discovered nor can she make sense of some of the troubling items she has unearthed.

Although Ilka has no experience working in a funeral home, she has no choice but to help the bereaved lay their loved ones to rest. Although the few funerals she helps plan are somewhat mundane, the arrival of an unidentified homeless person's corpse embroils her, Artie and Eileen in a bit of a mystery. While the police do eventually discover who he is, his identity raises some very intriguing questions about a still unsolved murder from twelve years earlier. This mystery plays out on the periphery of the novel and even though Ilka is curious about what happened to the man, she does not play much of a role in the investigation.

The Undertaker's Daughter by Sara Blaedel is an easy to read novel with an unusual premise and a mostly likable but sometimes frustrating protagonist. The funeral home is an out of the ordinary backdrop for the unfolding story and it is quite obvious Sara Blaedel carefully researched the intricacies involved with the funeral business. While the current mystery is completely wrapped up, the novel ends with a cliffhanger about Ilka's father. Hopefully the next installment in the Ilka series will be less of a character study and more of a mystery. ( )