I have to admit, A Murder to Remember was a bit silly and predictable, but I enjoyed it. It's a fun cross between rom com and murder mystery with a bunch of Austen references.
Amelia goes on a tour to England to clear her mind and enjoy all the Austen related tourist stops. She skips out of the official tour at a rather worse for wear manor house and while she's exploring on her own, she meets Tom, the current heir. Tom invites her to join him in drinking his way through the wine cellar and they have a fun evening together. But when morning comes around they have vague memories of having witnessed a murder.
Amelia and Tom are good characters. They've each been through a lot and it's affected how they look at the world. The audiobook has alternating narrators for their two points of view and it works well.
The mystery itself was fine. It turns out Amelia...
I don't read a lot of YA, but Queen of the Tiles combines murder and Scrabble and how could I pass that up? The Queen of the Tiles, Trina Low, is dead. She died a year ago during a championship Scrabble game, but someone has resurrected her Instagram account and is implying that she was murdered.
This was just such an entertaining book. It was well-thought-out and just full of wonderful words. The characters were diverse and, while they had the typical teenage jealousies and overreactions, they weren't annoying. I was surprised by who the "bad guy" was and happy with the solution, especially because it wasn't the typical direction a murder mystery heads.
I listened to the audio, which was a good choice. The narrator did a good job with the voices and the teenage emotions. I'm also not sure I could have pronounced some of the Scrabble words without help. Those kids had a massive vocabulary.
Complicated female friendshipsScrabble and wordplayExploration...
The Verifiers is a fun book, part mystery, part family drama, and part exploration of the data we provide online to corporations and how they might use that.
Claudia Lin, our amateur detective, is the youngest, and at least according to her mom the least successful, of three siblings. She has left her low-level corporate job to work at Veracity, but she hasn't told her family. Claudia is a mystery lover and Veracity is a bit like a detective agency, allowing wealthy clients to investigate people they meet on dating sites. Veracity takes on a new client, a woman who wants them to investigate two men she met online, but whom she is no longer in contact with. At first, it's just interesting, but then the client is found dead in her apartment, an apparent suicide.
Claudia is a likable character. She's smart and funny. She loves books and bicycling through New York. She's a lesbian and a romantic by...
Lena Scott's half-sister, former reality tv star Desiree Pierce, is dead. At first glance, it looks like an accidental overdose, but Lena is not convinced. You have to root for Lena. The book is told from her first-person point of view and she's smart, tenacious, funny, and sassy. The other characters are well-done too, from Desiree's best friend to Mel, the hip-hop producer father. And they each of secrets they're not telling Lena. There's a lot about Desiree's life that Lena doesn't understand and she doesn't know who she can trust.
It's a very contemporary mystery. A lot of the clues are on Desiree's phone, contacts, messages, photos, her Instagram account. It had twists and turns and I was nowhere close to guessing the killer. It all made sense in the end though. The story kept me riveted to the page. I was invited into a world that I don't usually visit even in books, with rappers and "influencers" and...
Killer Holiday is a fun, slightly silly romp of a mystery. Kristin and her friends are a hoot and I wish I had read the series in order, so I could feel like I knew them better. They're all introduced well here, but I felt like I was missing some insight into their relationships. It's a large cast, too, and knowing them better would have made it easier to keep track of who was who.
As far as the mystery goes, it's pretty straightforward. Once the crew meets Eula's new boyfriend there's little doubt who stole the luggage, but who kidnapped Chip is still a question. It's actually nice to have a mystery that involves theft and kidnapping, but no murders. It's light-hearted and has enough Christmas cocktails, decorations and parties to make it a true holiday read.
Read an excerpt from Killer Holiday:
Chapter One
Bootsie McElvoy burst through the front door of The Striped Awning, a bag of ice in her right...
I didn't read the first in the series, but I picked up In the Bag based on the blurb. I like mysteries and this one sounded fun. I chose well.
The cast of characters is great. Celeste is the lead and is a blast. she's funny, caring, has a tendency to get herself into potential danger, but who can blame her? Her best friend's the main suspect in a murder investigation. Speaking of Levi, I like him. He's got his own troubles, but still has time to give out advice, for better or worse. Celeste's dad's in town and adds to the confusion. There's also a bookie whose interest in Celeste is obvious, and a little creepy.
The plotline was good. There are enough suspects, but not too many. The clues tie together pretty well. For me though, the enjoyment was in the characters and the situations they get themselves into, no necessarily the whodunnit.
I was not a big fan of Celeste's "relationship"...
