I am a professional in the field of Forensic Psychology; so when this book came for review; of course I had to pick it up!

But for a YA mystery; it did fall short of my expectations – don’t get me wrong; I thoroughly enjoyed the book. It was a fun way to spend a lazy afternoon with this book and it’s sequel – To Right the Wrongs.

The characters, Erin Blake and her friends are like three musketeers and when Erin Blake is implicated in her favorite teacher’s murder; and the boy she has a crush on was also a suspect – she decides to do her own investigating.

This was a light read; not much of mystery-esque vibe, yet it was enough to hold my attention. And while I could have done without the insta – love situation that honestly wasn’t handled the way it could have been – I still enjoyed it enough to pick up the second book immediately after.

I love Mysteries and the synopsis of To Catch a Killer sounded like something I'd definitely enjoy! The writing itself fell a bit short since it took me a while to get into the plot and connect with the characters. It started off a bit slow and as a result, it took me a while to start enjoying it altogether.

I’ve been trying to be better about switching up my genres lately so I don’t suffer burnout. When I was browsing through my Kindle to catch up on old ARCs, I came across TO CATCH A KILLER. I had a feeling it’d be the perfect book to keep my reading mojo going, since I tend to find most mystery books unputdownable. The story follows Erin Blake as she tries to determine who killed her biology teacher, and if it happens to be related to the murder of her mother when she was a baby.

The concept was really interesting because Erin was self-taught (from her uncle’s books) about forensics, so she had a lot of household hacks to identify hair samples and other related procedures. She was determined to solve these mysteries with the help of her two friends, which were basically cardboard cut-outs of people instead of fleshed out, and Journey, the boy she’s always had a crush on. He’s involved because she saw him the night of their teacher’s murder and he has some skeletons in his closet as well. He was a tool (he called her a “lame girl that couldn’t drive a stick [shift]”, which annoyed me to no end) and she was too googly-eyed over him for me to actually enjoy the ship AT ALL.

I think one of my bigger issues with the book is that certain things felt over-explained? The writing style was a little odd in that way, where the reader is given a few unnecessary details in every scene. It was also pretty simplistic at the same time, which did make it easy to read at least. Unfortunately, my first prediction about who the killer was ended up being true. That’s way too obvious for me – especially because I usually fall for every red herring out there.

Overall though, I didn’t mind the characters and am generally curious about what’ll happen next? I will definitely read the next one once I can find it on sale or through the library.