7 Points About the Windsor Knot by SJ Bennett
A book review filled with spoilers!
With this being a fiction book, I may not have takeaways like I do with my non-fiction book, BUT I do have different points of the book that I’d love to highlight just because it stood out to me as I read it. Let me know if you had a similar experience as well to the points I had! (And remember this has spoilers so if you’d rather back track to read my non-spoiler review, head here.)
Point #1 - The Queen Should Get Credit
So apparently the Queen has had a history of cracking cases before. I really wanted to know why she secretly does it now because clearly she has a great skillset of asking the right questions to the right people. I genuinely did not like that the Queen didn’t get any credit for the work that she did to orchestrate the solving of the mystery. Especially a man who clearly wasn’t doing the right amount of due diligence being the one that received the credit at the end. That bothered me but I feel like it’s pretty common for women to do work in the background and allow credit to be given to others. This does make me wonder about the books that come up later in the series of if she ever gets more credit and what made her bow out of sharing about her gift to begin with. Is there a prequel in this series?
Point #2 - The Queen and Sir Simon’s Work Relationship
So if I was piggy backing off of the last point, I would think of all people she could have an honest conversation with, it would be with Simon about what she sees and what can be done to solve the mystery. He seemed like he was a close and trusted staff member so I wondered a lot as to why they couldn’t have a more open and honest conversation about her skills and her interest in the investigation. Did something happen in the past to where her trust was damaged with him? Because from reading the book, he seemed pretty trustworthy. He wasn’t pompous at all like Humphreys, and I’m sure it would be a relief for Rozie to not have to lie and sneak behind him (as that would stress me out to have to do that to my boss for my boss’s boss sake!)
Point #3 - We All Know a Humphreys
Sigh… speaking of Humphreys, I think we all know a man that’s like this. The ones that jump to the extreme. The ones that you can’t quite tell them anything because they are SO SURE that they know what they’re talking about. Arrogance is a big pet peeve of mine so every time the book spent time on Humpheys, my eyes would roll in some kind of way. I don’t know how the Queen kept her countenance around him because that man would annoy the heck out of me. So to see him get credit for the murder being solved irked my soul, but it’s what the Queen was satisfied with so it is what it is.
Point #4 - Escaping Yuri
Now I really fell for the red herring here of thinking that Masha and her husband, Yuri, had something to do with ol boy being killed especially with how beautiful the book described Masha as. Either way I feel scared for her because what do you mean your husband just casually have folks beat up when he’s feeling jealous?! Girl run! You don’t want to be next! I really want Masha to get away from this man. That’s why I feel like women have to be careful. I know you love the safety of a financially stable man, but what does his character look like? How does he treat people? How does he act when he’s angry? Like baby girl, pay attention!
I actually was hoping to hear some good happen for Masha by the end of the book but was sad to not have. Again, maybe it’s talked about in the series. But I did appreciate hearing from Masha herself when Rosie went to visit her. That was a really insightful conversation. And I’m SO GLAD that Rozie didn’t tag in her sister because girl, there’s some layers to this to where intentional planned out protection is needed for anyone who is planning to help Masha. It can’t be casually done. It has to be strategic with men like Yuri on the loose.
Point #5 - Don’t Underestimate Rozie!
Rozie! My girl! Listen I was rooting for her every step of the way. I felt the tension that she felt trying to be a good assistant to her boss but to also ensure she pleased the Queen. And yes that scene where she whopped that man that was trying to come for her on the train….sigh…it made me so proud. I was like you betta! Let them know that you ain’t no ordinary chick!
It also made me think about the fact I don’t know what I would have done if I was on that train with her. Like maybe I need to take some self-defense classes my own self. Something! Not that I plan to get caught up in a murder mystery anytime soon but I was so proud of her to see her defend herself so well without the help of anyone! The Queen and I were both impressed. Don’t sleep on Rozie yall. That girl could hold her own!
Point #6 - We Miss Obama Too, Queen
Whew…let me just say with all the chaos going in the world especially in my own backyard living in Memphis, TN in the United States as we look at who all has power in this country…YES, I too, miss Barack Obama. Yes, yes and yes again. I don’t even think I need to expound on this, but I appreciated that little nugget in the book where the Queen expressed her delight with the Obamas visiting. Let’s all take a moment of silence for where we are now as a country.
Sigh…okay.
Point #7 - HR Perspectives
It was really interesting reading this from a HR perspective. Seeing the tension of the staff when they had to investigate was familiar to me. I empathized with the Queen when she shared her concerns about her staff. It was clear that she had built a positive work culture with her staff that had been there for ages. And it doesn’t take a lot for a culture to break down. Usually it just takes a trust issue to cause everything to fall apart. Trust is so powerful like that. As soon as suspicions take root, it could take years for trust to be rebuilt within a team. I think the book highlighting how much that worried the Queen shows a lot about her character and just overall how much she cared about her people. And for the murderer to not even come from the staff made this whole situation even worse. But of course, they had to do their due diligence right? So yea, I do hope maybe in the future books of the series that the culture of the staff was able to bounce back after that situation, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it takes a while.
So those are my interesting points that stood out to me from this book. I enjoyed the read, but I realized that I am very impatient when it comes to mysteries! I don’t want to say the book was slow as it’s my first mystery book in a LONG time so I can’t fairly gauge if it was slow or not at this point. But man, I was ready for the book to stop describing the sky and the garden and get to the dialogue with the Queen! However I did enjoy the humor sprinkled in the story. I loved Rozie’s character. (By the way, autocorrect absolutely hate how Rozie’s name is spelled.) I did enjoy the Queen’s character as well. I would definitely read another book from the series again!
Have you read this book before or any from the series? Tell me your thoughts in the comments!
