I spent most of this book feeling as though I wasn't really drawn to it, but when the end came around I realized I was a little sad to see it go. There were some interactions (between Hazel and her husband, specifically) that were pretty uncomfortable, but those scenes added a murky kind of unreality to the tone that worked really well.

A WILD ride from start to finish! Loved everything about this book from, the complex characters to the plot that kept me guessing. A must read. Thank you NetGalley for the ARC.

Finally a great read with a satisfying ending. Page-turner - YES. Simply characters, plot, and writing - makes for an enjoyable read.

This book is something I never would have picked up but am really glad I did. There was just so much going on with this book that it was hard to pin point one turning point in the novel.

Give this book to all your detective loving book friends!

Published on Goodreads:
While reading "Hello, Transcriber", I kept thinking of the lyrics of Leonard Cohen - "You want it darker?". This is an American thriller that is on the level of many Norwegian and Swedish authors. The characters are complex, and while some readers complained that the book had a slow start, I didn't find that to be the case. And, as much a character as our heroine, is the town where the story takes place. Stephen King could not have come up with a scarier place. The four stars are for the creative storyline and brilliant writing. That said, I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone who doesn't like seriously dark stories.

Four stars because the author is such a creative writer. That fact I was really impressed with. I, honestly, tried (many times) to like this book but couldn't past the 70% point. The language was very disturbing to me, and the plot seemed to be the main character planning ways to cheat on her husband with one of the investigators she was transcribing for. and how she lusted after him. I have so very many books to read and review that I couldn't see spending more weeks trying to get through this one.

Very good, very unpredictable, very engaging. Kudos to the author for creating an imaginative tale that is well executed. Most thriller fans will really enjoy this.

Thanks very much for the ARC for review!!

I couldn’t get through the first chapter. The overuse of similes just put me off. I wanted to like this book but there are some things that are like fingernails on the chalkboard. See what I did there? YMMV.

Review of Uncorrected Digital Galley

Crime in Black Harbor, Wisconsin keeps the police busy; their reports keep transcriber Hazel Greenlee listening as they detail the gruesome crime scenes. The investigation into a suspicious drug death, linked to a notorious dealer, Candy Man, draws Hazel, who aspires to become a writer, into the investigation. She soon finds herself enthralled with the lead detective, Nikolai Kole, but, in order to protect her ability to be involved in the case, she keeps an important secret from him.

Just how far will Hazel go to get the story?

Complex, well-defined characters populate this story of commitment and integrity. Hazel is disappointed in her marriage; her husband, Tommy, is thoughtlessly cruel, and, for Hazel, their marriage has become a game of survival.

For two years, Hazel and Tommy have called a duplex in Black Harbor home. Tommy is an aquatic ecologist, hired by the city because the lake is inexorably encroaching on the shoreline. Job-searching Hazel, who types one hundred eleven words per minute with ninety-eight percent accuracy, is well-suited for the police transcriber position that she interviews for and accepts.

Anchored by a strong sense of place [and the Forge Bridge], the unfolding story is, despite the ongoing police investigation into opioid-related deaths, less mystery and more of a woman’s introspective scrutiny to reveal the truth about her marriage and herself.

Plot twists and unforeseen revelations keep the tension building; both the investigation into the drug deaths and the denouement yield some unexpected surprises. However, the elegiac undercurrent running throughout the captivating story gives the narrative a pensive, somber tone. Readers are likely to find it difficult to put this book aside before turning the final page.

Highly recommended.

I received a free copy of this eBook from St. Martin’s Press / Minotaur Books and NetGalley
#HelloTranscriber #NetGalley

It started off slow and I had a really hard time getting into this book it just wasn’t enough suspense me for me. I would rate it a 3/5 it wasn’t the worst but I’m not sure if I would want to read it again. Thank you to NetGalley for giving me a copy read!

Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for an ARC of this book.

I have really mixed thoughts on this book. While I did enjoy the writing, ultimately the story is about a woman’s misery with her life and her husband, and has very little to do with any crime or mystery. Had I know what this book focused on, I think I would have enjoyed it more, but I was just disappointed.

Thank you netgalley for the opportunity to preview Hello, Transcriber. This book captures your attention from the beginning. The author does a great job in describing a desolute area, crime ridden, drug invested, and dark.
Hazel wants to be a writer and she listens to the police radio all the time, but soon she is part of the crime scene and is trusted with a secret.
She teams up with a law enforcemtn officer and soon she is part of they mystery surronding "the candyman" and she gets more information that she bargained for because now she is part of the crime beat. She's in the middle.
4 stars. Good Crime novel. One to read!

Unique story, captivating plot, and enough action to keep me reading way past my bedtime. This is a really well crafted story. I would love to spend time with the main character, Hazel, if she were real. She enjoys words and the way they feel, and the way they can paint pictures in your mind. Much like this book does.

I really like the premise of "Hello, Transcriber" - it's what got me interested in reading it. The one line pitch is "Police report transcriber gets entangled in a serial murder". The transcriber angle is a really unique take on a mystery novel.

The basics story here is that Hazel, the 26-year old, gets a job as a transcriber in a police station in "a small town with big city crime." She's in a bad marriage with a shady character who's friends with other shady characters and that overlaps with her job. Then stuff happens.

This appears to be Hannah Morrissey's second novel, though the first one (released in 2013) doesn't have any reviews. So let's consider this her first real novel. Hannah seems to be pretty good with dialogue. Anytime there was dialogue amongst the characters, I couldn't put the book down. The problem is that real dialogue didn't happen until 40% of the way through the book (yes, I read it on a Kindle).

Many times through the first third of the book I thought of just putting it down and quitting. It got too painful. The problem, it seems, is that Hannah puts so much information and so much unnecessary description into any given sentence and then strings 4 or 5 of those sentences together so by the end of the paragraph you don't remember how the paragraph even started or what it's supposed to be about. I had to re-read far too many paragraphs/pages to figure out what she was trying to say.

I kept with it because 1) I like the premise and believed in it, and 2) I got this from #netgalley and make a commitment to get through every #netgalley book.

Here's an example:

"My stomach growls as I hang my jacket and stand my boots by the register. It feels colder in the kitchen, like when you enter a walk-in beer cooler at a gas station. A cursory search, however, shows that the windows are shut. I close my hand around the freezing door handle of the fridge and crack it open to look inside. The milk expired two days ago; it's probably fine. A few triangles of thin-crust pepperoni pizza are petrified on a plate, the tips curled up like the corner of a rug. On the shelf below is a pair of defeathered mourning doves in a plastic bag, and to the left a venison steak that's starting to regrow it's fur. I take out the venison and the milk, holding my breath as I toss the meat into the garbage and pour myself a bowl of cereal."

Holy smokes that's a lot of description to say "I'm really hungry but the fridge is littered with old rotting food so I pour myself a bowl of cereal."

Then, alas, nearly halfway through the book there is less description and more dialogue. It's like Hannah became an entirely different author. That dialogue kept me glued to the pages. And then every now and then she'd come up with a whopper of a line that I had to remember, like:

"Everyone writes about the calm before a storm. But no one writes about the calm afterward."

and

"My professor once asked everyone in class to answer the question: Why do you write? A boy in my class replied 'because the world is more beautiful as a lie.'"

All in all, this is not a bad book by any means. It only took me 2 days to read. If you like mystery novels and you're not such a critical prat as I, then you should pick up the story. It's a decent beach or vacation read.

If you are as overly critical as me, then I say we pick up Hannah's next book when it comes out. There's a better writer in her eager to be revealed.

#NetGalley #HelloTranscriber

This story by Hannah Morrissey drew me in immediately. Set in a Wisconsin town riddled with drug overdoses and murders, Hazel, an aspiring writer starts a job as a police transcriber. Listening to the voices of police officers as she transcribes their reports, she is drawn to one of the detectives, Nik Kole. Soon, she places herself in the midst of an investigation, in the midst of a burning attraction to Kole, while wrestling with her own writing demons and unhappy marriage. The author's writing is absolutely captivating. Beautifully written, I could not put the book down! Thank you, Net Galley and St. Martin's Press for the opportunity to read this novel. Hannah Morrissey is an author not to be missed!

I heard good things about this book, but I couldn't stand reading the messages to transcribe with the punctuation notes and whatnot. Just not for me unfortunately. ARC provided by NetGalley in exchange for a fair review.

Hazel "110 words per minute, 98% accuracy" Greenlee is the new overnight transcriptionist for the Black Harbor Police Department. Black Harbor is a small city with a disproportionately high crime rate, including a high rate of suicide via jumping off the Forge Bridge. Hazel came across the bridge while out for a run and she finds herself drawn to it. She has no particular desire to jump off the bridge, but maybe it is the writer in her, but she feels the bridge calling to her and demanding tribute, which she offers in the form of sentimental belongings.

Hazel and her husband live in a duplex, with the other side of the duplex occupied by a father and son (Will and Sam). During one of her first nights on the job, she observes Sam dragging a finger up and down in the frost on the window to the office where the transcribers work (he cannot actually see in the window), spelling out "I hid a body." If that was not creepy enough, it was not his finger he was using to write the message.

When she returns the next night, she has a report from Investigator Nikolai Kole waiting for transcription that details the story behind Sam's message. A nine-year-old boy overdosed on oxycodone that was presumably provided to him by a neighbor in his apartment building, Tyler Krejarek, otherwise known as the "Candy Man", for his reputation of providing drugs to minors. Hazel soon meets Investigator Kole in person and finds herself drawn deep into the investigation. However, she hides the fact that Sam, one of the suspects, is her next-door neighbor, knowing that it is a conflict of interest and will prevent her from being involved in transcribing the reports related to the case. She is also finds herself drawn to Kole, despite the fact that she is married to a controlling husband and despite the fact that Kole has numerous issues of his own. Hazel quickly finds herself in over her head, which proves potentially deadly.

The author does a good job of keeping up the suspense. There are some significant surprising twists in the story, some central to the overall plot and some more peripheral. Hazel and Kole are both complex characters and the author handles well the moral ambiguity of their actions, individually and collectively. Hazel's aspirations to be a writer are utilized well in the story, as she starts to create a manuscript based on what has happened and what she suspects might have happened. "Hello, Transcriber" is worth well reading.

I received a copy of the e-book via NetGalley in exchange for a review.

A nail biting and intense thriller that is hard to put down!! It’s extremely well written capturing the reader from the very beginning with its vivid descriptions and dialogue. The story itself is full of twists and turns promising an exciting read. Highly recommend!!!

Small town with big crime! Married Police transcriber gets involved with detective and helps him go after local drug dealers. Complications which I won’t outline. Clever plot and well done

This book’s depressing, melancholic tone is effective trigger reminding you of your past resentments, forcing you to confront your inner sadness! Somewhat it also reminded me of dark, intense tone of Liz Moore’s Long Bright River with a remarkable difference: this book’s heroine doesn’t look for missing sister, she’s looking for her lost innocence and something concrete to live for!

Hazel Greenlee is one of the most complex characters I’ve ever read. Yes, she’s living in a place with her ecologist husband brings out freshly hunted animal food to their table each day and spends his entire time to hunt more. She’s in pain, everything hurts, even sex with her husband… She’s broken inside but she hides it too well by keeping her long silences, spending days without having meaningful communication with real people.

Her influencer sister already criticized her for wasting her potential. After being stuck between more meaningless jobs, she decides to get the job at Black Harbor’s police transcriber position.

Black Harbor is the haunted place, Wisconsin’s most crime- ridden city. The author gives us vivid, realistic and embellished descriptions help us to see the city as living, breathing, functioning human being. Even the terrifying suicide bridge has its own characteristics, taking all those lives, summoning the souls of the people who are trapped in limbo. Hazel may know about that bridge more than anyone : she has dysfunctional connection with it. Maybe the bridge is the only place, she can come clean with herself. The only place she stops pretending.

Her new job at night shift helps her get away from her home, her marriage, her haunted past. She has magical fingers which types faster than any other transcribers who worked at the department and she has English degree which makes her perfect!

But a gruesome crime she’s transcribed forced her cross paths with charismatic officer Kole Nikolai who has been recently suspended and returned back to his job. And the case is connected to her neighbor Sam who confesses to hide a young kid who is overdosed. There is a dangerous guy out there called Candy Man poisons the little kid with his drug supplies and he needs to be stopped!

As soon as Hazel starts helping Kole about she finds herself involve in darkest secrets of Black Harbor and she also finds herself drawn into this enigmatic man who has more secrets than her.

This book’s writing style is simply perfect! It shakes you to the core, making you feel everything. You feel the deep sadness of the characters who are trapped in their lives and suffocating, finding a way out. The portraits, realistic depictions, intriguing pacing capture your entire attention. You keep guessing the culprit till the end. And that heartbreaking ending was best conclusion for this haunting story!

I’m so happy this book put this amazing author on my radar. I’m looking forward to read more works of her in near future!

Special thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press/ Minotaur Books for sharing this digital reviewer copy with me in exchange my honest thoughts.