This cozy mystery was an easy, yet utterly predictable read.
I didn't relate to any of the characters. Greta was naive & chipper to the point of being annoying. She’s a suspect in a murder investigation and doesn’t understand why the detective refuses to share details of the case with her? Girl, come on. You should be smarter than that.
The rest of the characters were flat, lacking personality, and felt interchangeable. Iris and some of the lesser developed characters were cloyingly sweet.
Sadly, nothing in this book stood out. That being said, this is the first book in what will become a cozy series, so I'll hold onto hope that the next book is better

Overall I enjoyed this start to a new series, but, in my opinion, it was a tad longer than it needed to be; some of the info, especially the stuff not connected to the murder could have been condensed. I was also kind of annoyed at the protagonist and her 2 besties; how old are they??? The murder itself was finally good and had a lot of things thrown in, from rare books to a secret hiding place. Also, thanks to this book, I feel an urge to visit Wisconsin now.

I loved, loved, loved this book!
Greta Plank is the new librarian in a small town. She has managed to make friends pretty quickly and her life is nice and quiet, just the way she wants it to be. Until one of her friends dies and she is the one who discovers the body.
The town’s new detective treats Greta as a suspect and this makes her decide to start her own investigation into what actually happened.

This book was the first one in a new cozy mystery series and I can’t wait to get my hands on the next one! This story had all the elements I love in a cozy: lovely characters, great friendships, an idyllic town, lots of talk about books and just a touch of romance.
I kind of guessed who’d done it but I didn’t mind at all. I still enjoyed this book a lot!

Thank you so much for this review copy.

What a great first Cozy in a new series! I love the friction filled budding relationship between Greta, the FMC, and Detective McHenry. There were some instances where the story fell victim to "first-in-a-series" issues, but overall a great read and I'm looking forward to future books in the Larkspur Library Mysteries.

I’m a fan of cozy mysteries and books that involve libraries. I did enjoy it but there were some dull moments and things not explained well or waiting too long to be explained. And the chemistry was a bit off.

Thank you NetGalley and Leah Dobrinska for providing this ARC to review. ~I was given this book and made no commitments to leave my opinions, favorable or otherwise. ~

I have a real soft spot about books about libraries, so I was eager to read Death Checked Out by Leah Dobrinska. I genuinely enjoyed reading this book. It is a murder mystery novel set in a small Wisconsin town and the local librarian, who is new in town and someone who's made it her mission to befriend everyone in Larkspur, is determined to use her research skills to solve the murder of her friend because the (also new in town) detective isn't used to small-town living. Along the way, they find out a lot of small town secrets, some truths about themselves, and also friendship (or more?) in each other. This book delivers all of the fell good, heartwarming, warm cup of tea feelings you want from a romance novel with the mystery and suspense of a detective novel. I honestly wasn't able to guess who the killer was before the big reveal, the writing was that well done. I look forward to reading more from Leah Dobrinska again in the future.

I volunteered to review this book in exchange for an advanced reader copy - any opinions expressed are my own. My sincere thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.

#MurderMystery #Librarians #Romance #ARC #NetGalley #LeahDobrinska #DeathCheckedOut

DNF--I was bored and the characters didn't pull me in, despite the main character being a librarian! I don't read a lot of cozy mysteries however, so another reader might enjoy it very much so. Just not my cup of tea.

A LIBRARY MURDER MYSTERY!!!

I am OBSESSED! with this unique and cozy mystery book. Its dark academia meets cottage core in the most perfect setting. The setting is captured perfectly in the beautiful writing by Leah Dobrinska. Descriptions, images and characters are all so well written with depth.

The cover was what initially caught my attention. it is goregus and i know its gonna be popular with the booktok girlies!

I cant wait to follow this series and explorer more of the authors writings.

The story begins very well. It starts with a very beautiful description of Larkspur. The imagery is so beautiful that you can feel being transported to the beach and the quiet Avenue. It's really a picture painted with words. A town described to be a small illustration to the quiet in nature during the season of fall.


Now go ahead and imagine having a murder happen in such a quiet and small town where everybody knows everyone and people know the routine of everybody else like you know your neighbour's whole schedule, it is that small of a town.


And this is exactly what the protagonist Greta Plank sees. Now Greta Plank is a librarian, and in the beginning there is a hint of her having a mysterious past that caused her to shift her location and come to this small town of Larkspur. This mystery will unfold as the novel progresses.


Coming back to the story, it is, as the name suggest, a murder mystery and it has all the essential elements of making it actually a gripping story. You are not given any idea as to who the murderer can be because everything around the whole scene of the murder is very suspicious. It can be an accident, it can be a murder and it can be anything to highlight the possibility without giving away any hasty clues and hints. Thus it is indeed a very realistic setting.


So in a way, you are actually working alongside the protagonist and the detective in the story to uncover the clues and track down the cause of the death and highlight whether it is a murder or an accident. It is actually a very gripping read and it can be read in one sitting. 


But the issue lies in the way the story is written. At times there is way too much explaining done and at times things are over simplified. While it can be chalked down to being written in a narrative way and readers are not led in to start their own investigation, for fans of Christie and Hitchcock, this can be a bummer. 


That said, I am a fan of Agatha Christie and Alfred Hitchcock, and I do like to have a story where clues are sprinkled all over for the reader to latch upon and have an idea that perhaps this is a murder and these maybe the suspects and this kind of writing where you are clueless till the end with nothing but a few leads is also a great way to stick around till the end and scratch your head for the answers.


All in all I think I would give this book a four out of five because it does have all the elements which would make it a good mystery plot. Moreover the length of the book gives the reader the freedom to complete the entire mystery in one sitting.

This is a very cozy mystery set in Larkspur, WI - a small town where everyone gets along, and nothing bad happens. Until Franklin, an older gentleman who's a rare book collector and is wheelchair bound, is found dead at the bottom of his stairs by Greta, the new librarian. With a detective straight out of Chicago on the case, Greta finds herself at the center of this murder investiagtion - as a suspect, and must start her own investigation to clear her name.

I really enjoyed about 75% of this book - the plot was super cute, the small town characters were quirky as promised, and the mystery unfolded pretty smoothly. But I felt the chemistry between the new detective and Greta didn't build properly - there were barely sparks by the end, and sometimes Greta's character had way too much internal strife for past situations that weren't explained until well into the second half of the book. I think the other 25% of the book could have been edited down/cut completely and the story would have flowed much smoother.

I will keep my eye out for the next in this series, but I do hope it progresses a little more quickly than Death Checked Out did.

This was the first book I have read by Leah Fobrinska and I enjoyed it. Death Checks Out is a small town librarian mystery with a likable heroine and a fun, fast-moving plot. I’m a sucker for books about books or libraries, and I would read future books by this author or in this series. Thanks to Level Best Books and Net Galley for the ARC.

Many thanks for this ARC! Being a fan of cozy mystery genre and being attracted by the cover and description, I hoped I will like this book, However, I found it too predictable in the end, which may not be the case for someone who doesn't read as much as myself.

3.5/5

I have a confession and it is that this cheesy, romance, detective type genre is my guilty pleasure! I am happy to say that this one did not disappoint! I love the girl had something horrible/tough that happened in her past and she moves to a small town and makes a group of best friends and they all solve mysteries together. Any combination as long as its done well I just love it!

The first page of the book I was a little nervous when there were multiple book analogies on that page but thankfully there was only one other line in the book where they threw one. This was a very fun and easy read that kept me guessing the entire time.

Greta is a strong independent character who has had a tough experience in her past, we don't find out what it is other than it having something to do with a boy. I do wish we would have found out in this book because it leaves me with questions which I'm hoping it will be answered in the next one. Detective McHenry was one that I'm not to sure on, you can see from a mile away that they are going to have chemistry but he was such a poop at the beginning of the book! I will be looking forward to reading more about their relationship in future books as well!

Thank you Netgalley and Leah Dobrinska for gifting me an advanced copy of Death Checked out in return for my honest review.

Small town mystery, a library, and female friendships... sign me up. Death Checked Out was a delightful cozy mystery. Larkspur and the characters were quirky and fun. Being from a small town in the midwest, I felt very at home in this novel. This was a great opener to the Larkspur Library Mysteries and I am very much looking forward to the upcoming books in this series.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for my eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Greta Plank, library director in the small, lakeside town of Larkspur, Wisconsin, prefers her rose-tinted glasses extra rosy, thank you very much. It’s how she copes with the hard stuff in life…like her sister’s death and her ex-boyfriend’s deception. But Greta’s cheery resolve takes a hit when she stumbles upon a dead body on her way home from work. What she assumes is a terrible accident Greta soon learns is something more sinister, and to make matters worse, a new-to-town detective cites her as not only his primary source for the case, but his top suspect.

This was highly entertaining and the romance was too good!

Thank you NetGalley and publishers for the arc, in exchange for an honest review.

I really wanted to like this one more than I did. I was between 2 & 3 stars… I do think the characters were cute, but it felt too cheesy at points multiple points; think Hallmark movie with a murder mystery. Additionally, I know listen/watch too much true crime stories to suspend belief in how the case was solved…

This book is #1 of what will be at least a series of three books. I’m not sure I’d read the others… though I am curious to see if Greta & the detective get together.

Thank you, NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with a free eARC in exchange for an honest review!

SPOILERS MAY BE INCLUDED IN THIS REVIEW

This was such a cute cozy mystery. Other than the Thursday Murder Club series I think this may be the only other cozy mystery I have read and it won’t be the last of this series. The plot follows Greta, a librarian who is fairly new to the small town of Larkspur. After finding one of her friends dead, the book takes us on an adventure of Greta trying to solve the case along with her two best friends Josie and Iris after being wrongfully accused. However, Greta may have made herself a target for getting too involved.

As a lover of books myself, I enjoyed that the book centred around a librarian and the scene was set extremely well. I wish we had more descriptions of the small town to really get into the mood and headset for the book.

When reading the summary of the book, I think the parts centred around Greta’s sister’s death and her ex boyfriend can be changed or removed as I depicted that these would be a much bigger part of the story than they were!

Greta and Josie- I loved them both! You could see how kind and caring they both were and valued their friendship completely. I find this a lot more appealing in books such as cozy mysteries like this that it is centred on friendship rather than a romantic encounter, although I did love the growing friendship between Greta and the detective.

Iris- I’m not sure whether iris was written to be portrayed as so unlikable. Her ‘best’ friend is being accused of a murder and all Iris cares about is ditching Greta and Josie all the time for her boyfriend that she hardly knows and hasn’t been with very long.

The twist- I really enjoyed the twist and the ending. I only guessed half of it in regards to who the person behind everything was but not the other twist and why these things were being done.

Overall I loved the book. It did take me around the 40% ish mark to really become hooked into the story once it got going and more exciting things started happening but it was enjoyable reading about the characters and setting the scene.
I think the story was really important in terms of highlighting the power and importance of friendship (new or existing), family, and not giving up for anything or anyone.

There are many things working for this book: cosy small town vibes, a librarian protagonist, a rare book collection, a surly detective who's new to town. However, it felt short of being a good cosy mystery novel. Solid 3 star read though.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for sending this book for review. All opinions are my own.

Death Checked Out by Leah Dobrinska, the first in the Larkspur Library Mystery series, is sure to be a runaway hit with cozy mystery readers. Greta is the library director in the idyllic lakeside town of Larkspur, Wisconsin. She looks for the best in everyone and every situation, working to win over the library patrons and making friends with town residents. Greta’s world is rocked when her reclusive friend is murdered and she becomes a suspect.

This book caught and held my interest from the very first page through the last. Not only was the setting charming and a perfect backdrop, I wanted to be friends with the supporting characters who were true-to-life and so relatable. The mystery was well constructed with clues and red herrings throughout. (I reviewed an advance reader copy and all opinions are my own.) I am already anticipating the next in this feel-good cozy series.

When I saw that author Leah Dobrinska was writing her first cozy mystery book and it centered around a Librarian and her two fellow librarian friends sleuthing out a crime I knew I had to give this one a read 😊. I mean that cover is just gorgeous 😍.
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Leah Dobrinska builds a cozy world in a small lakeside town in the Wisconsin Northwoods, adds a handsome new to town detective, a curious librarian with a few secrets in her past, two adorable and amazing friends, a mystery with an unexpected twist and bookish puns sprinkled in. I want to hang out at the cafe with these Librarians! 🙌🏻 Loved the mom homeschooling reference. As a homeschool mom libraries are also my go to! The descriptive writing flowed making it easy to picture what’s going on. As this is the first book there is set up for future books happening and I can’t wait to see how the stories develop in more books.
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Thank you @netgalley and @levelbestbooks for my ebook copy to read and review. All thoughts are my own.