Many thanks to NetGalley, Poisoned Pen Press, and Dreamscape Media for gifting me both a digital and audio ARC of the latest book by Sulari Gentill, with the audiobook narrated by Katherine Littrell - 4 stars!

Theo has dropped out of college, determined to be a writer instead of an attorney as was the planned path for her. She shows up on the doorstep of her brother, Gus, hoping that he will support her. She begins writing in a cafe and meets a famous author. They slowly begin a relationship but then she finds him brutally murdered right after signing on with a prestigious agency. And now she is considered a suspect - until they start looking at Gus. Enter Mac, Gus' friend and a private investigator, who comes from a family of conspiracy theorists.

There's a lot to unpack in this book! There is mixed media in the form of message boards between the theorists, which I always enjoy, but had me confused in the beginning. The author has once again created an intriguing storyline, even though there were times I was yelling at Theo to open her eyes! Kept me on my toes until the end.

This was an early DNF for me....it sets two stories side-by-side with hard cuts between them (I think Woman in the Library did this also?) but the jump is so jarring, I found this too difficult to get into. This might be in part because of how wild the first story is. This might have paid off but I didn't have the patience to find out where it went.

Theo is an aspiring writer who has skipped out from her Australian law school studies to go live with her brother in Lawrence, Kansas. While working on her first novel, writing at a local cafe, she meets and falls in love with a an older, well known author.. When that man is murdered, Theo becomes the primary suspect. As more people are murdered, Theo and her brother are not only suspects, but are also in great danger.. Even though I quickly determined who were the guilty parties, i still found myself intrigued by the story. I was anxious to see how everything played out.
I was given an ARC of this novel by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

#netgalley
#themysterywriter
#sularigentill
#mystery

The Mystery Writer is the latest release from Sulari Gentill, author of The Woman in the Library. I have heard so many great things about The Woman in the Library, so when I was offered the chance to read The Mystery Writer a little early, I jumped on it.

This story follows Theodosia Benton, an aspiring author, who has just left her native Australia and moved to the United States, to Lawrence, Kansas, to live with her older brother, Gus, a successful attorney. The two had an unconventional upbringing and you can tell that there is a lot of history there, yet they have a loving and supportive relationship. Gus is happy that his sister is pursuing her dreams, instead of going along with the path her parents and grandparents had in mind for her.

As part of her writing process, Theo begins to visit the same local cafe everyday. It's there she meets and befriends, Dan Murdoch, who turns out to be a best-selling author. Their relationship develops at a hasty clip and then one day, Theo finds Dan has been murdered. The stuff hits the proverbial fan from there.

Gus has a friend, Mac, who happens to be a private investigator, and he sort of takes on a role as Theo's protector, as they work together to try to figure out what happened to Dan.

This was a difficult book for me to rate. It started out strong for me. I was deeply intrigued for like the first 40%, or so, then it just went absolutely off the rails. I got to the point where I wanted it away from me. I was over it. It was such a sharp turn, I looked up like, what the actual heck am I reading?!

There was a mixed media element to this that I did not enjoy. Usually I am totally down for mixed media use, but in this case, I found it to be more distracting than anything. I understand what it was supposed to represent in context to the overall plot, but yeah, just because I understand it, doesn't mean I enjoyed it.

Then there's Theo herself, who was way too naive for my tastes. Her naivety kept being explained away by the fact that she had moved from Australia, but that doesn't track. It's Australia, not the moon. She felt more like a time traveler straight out of the 1920s, or something; absurd. This is the type of story, where I really have to be able to get behind the MC and I found her to be truly annoying. I did like Gus, Mac and the dog, Horse. Theo though, not so much.

Also, I didn't enjoy where the plot went. The baddies seemed mere caricatures of baddies, versus something that would make sense to this story. I just couldn't get behind it all. With this being said, I understand that this is 100% due to personal taste and that a lot of Readers may end up really enjoying this one. After all, just because it wasn't for me, doesn't mean it won't be for you.

If this synopsis sounds intriguing to you, or if you enjoyed this author's previous work, you should absolutely give it a go. Perhaps I'm just in a mood. It wouldn't be the first time that's happened. Thank you to the publisher, Dreamscape Media, for providing me with a copy to read and review. I do appreciate it and should say that the audiobook was very well narrated. I may not have gotten through this one, if it wasn't for the audio format!

Theo has just run away from college, well, is it really running away when you're an adult? When she shows up at her brothers door in Kansas all the way from Australia, the only thing she wants to do is write. Gus welcomes her with open arms and tells her to "write away". She never expected her life to turn into one of those thriller novels she likes to read, but it does when her closest friend in town is murdered. Theo finds the body as well as accusations that she could be the killer. When they finger pointing swings toward her brother, without anywhere to turn, Theo confesses to a crime Gus is sure she didn't commit. Now the welcoming brother must work hard to clear his sisters name and end the murder spree that rocked the little town in Kansas.

Huge thanks goes out to Netgalley, Poisoned Pen Press and Sulari Gentill for an advanced copy of this audiobook.

The Woman in the Library (you can check out my review for that here) was such a fantastic read, I couldn't go without reading Sulari Gentill's newest book, so when it became available on netgalley, I swooped it up as an audiobook. I can not get enough of thrillers and mysteries lately. Maybe this is the year for them, or it's just the year that I am in the mood to reach them. Out of the 36 books I have read so far this year, 10 of them have been in this genre and the majority of them have been over 4 stars.

My two favorite types of audiobooks are non-fiction and mystery. I feel like the narrators really bring you into the story and get your pulse racing when they read the action sequences in mysteries and thrillers. Katherine Littrell does an amazing job not only making you feel like you are a part of the story but in voicing each of the characters. It's like there is an entire cast, except it's really only one woman.

"Perhaps the dead are afraid to live, as much as we are afraid to die." - Pierce Altamirano

I think the best part about this book are the little clues that Gentill littered throughout. They send you in search of answers, hoping that you will unravel the truth, but they could also just be a wild goose chase. This was such an incredibly entertaining read. The whole way through I was engaged with the plot and the pacing was perfect. I started to get a little freaked out when the book hit 90% and there was still so much to unfold but Sulari Gentill did an exceptional job wrapping everything up.

This book delves into the deceptive world of conspiracy theories. You need to be able to accept the outrageous to really sink into the story. If you know a conspiracy theorist, or have found yourself enticed by a really well explained theory, this is the book for you. It will have you questioning everyone and everything you thought you knew. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫 stars from me for this delightfully devious read.

I read The Woman in the Library and did not particularly like it that much so when I saw this I thought why not give the author a second chance? Maybe it’s just me but I don’t think I like the way she writes or just her stories in general. From the start I suspected I might not line it and I was right. Just didn’t work for me and all the conspiracy stuff put me off rather quickly. Don’t think this author is for me.

The Mystery Writer
by Sulari Gentill
2/5 ⭐

I went into this book blindly. The cover and title caught my eye, and I recognized the author. If I had read the synopsis, I probably would not have requested this book. This book is very chaotically written. It jumps timelines and events with its fast-paced plot. At the beginning of the book, the different points of view are drastically distant. I had no idea where this book was going.

The rapid storyline made me want to keep listening but also it went in circles. The conspiracy theory parts had me shaking my head. This author had a hidden political agenda. Lastly, I did not enjoy the ending. Although it answered most of my questions it was written in a recap style instead of real time.

Thank you to @Dreamscape_Media and @netgalley for the ALC in exchange for my honest review. All my opinions are my own.
Publication Date: March 19, 2024

The Mystery Writer by Sulari Gentill follows Thea, an Australian who ends up in Kansas after dropping out of law school. She moves in with her brother Gus and his dog Horse. Thea wants to be a writer but doesn’t know if she will be any good at it. Benders is her favorite coffee shop where she writes and meets Dan, a published author. Dan has been giving Thea advice on writing and soon they become more than friends. When Thea goes by his house she stumbles upon his body. From there Thea’s life seems to downhill fast. Now being harassed by the media and the cops. Gus and his PI Mac will do anything to help Thea out of this mess. This is the first book that I have read by this author and truly loved it. I am definitely going to her other books. If you are a fan of Ruth Ware, Claire Douglas, Lisa Scottoline. Megan Maranda, or Lisa Jewell you will love Suraei Gentill.

The mystery – and the mystery writer herself – both kick off when a bedraggled, desperate Theodosia Benton knocks on her big brother’s door. Theo is uncertain of her welcome, but when her flight from Canberra fetches her up in Lawrence Kansas, she’s hoping against hope that the one person who has never failed her will rescue her one more time. Even if she and Gus haven’t seen each other in years.

Her hope in her brother is not misplaced. But her arrival pushes a small stone down a long, steep hill that gathers more than enough moss, snow and really big rocks to crush the lives that they are trying to build. And sweeps entirely too many people around them into its destructive path.

Depositing Theo – along with poor Gus and his ginormous dog Horse – and the heart of the deepest and darkest conspiracy theory that neither of them could have possibly seen coming. Not even their best friend’s family of obsessive, true believing conspiracy nuts.

Escape Rating B-: I picked this up because I LOVED the author’s previous book, The Woman in the Library, and was hoping for more of the same. That isn’t what I got – emphasis on the “I” because I think that the reasons this book didn’t work for me until the very end were a “me” thing that may not be a “you” thing. Before I explain, let me state for the record that the dog is a VERY GOOD BOY and he’s doing FINE at the end of the story.

Even though I loved Horse nearly as much as Theo did, this book drove me bonkers. I was listening to it and it turned into a rage listen, but as much as the whole thing frustrated me no end, I couldn’t stop even though I couldn’t stand another minute. So I switched to text just to find out who done what and how and why a whole lot faster.

The audio was fine, and the narrator did a terrific job of dealing with Gus’ deliberately strong Aussie accent and Theo’s less pronounced one among all their American friends and neighbors. It was the story itself that was making me crazy, to the point where I tried thumbing to the end of the book just so I would know – but it didn’t make sense because things get very, very twisty at the end.

However, that twistiness did manage to redeem a great deal of my frustration, because the macguffin that powers this whole twisted mess that Theo has been dropped into was definitely a WOW to the point where it’s entirely too easy to fall down the rabbit hole of it being real. Really plausible anyway, in spite of itself. Or myself. Or both.

But it definitely middled in a place where it seemed obvious to this reader that there was a malign agency of some kind behind the way that Theo’s life goes so far down the road to hell in that handcart so fast. (Like Wednesday’s audiobook, people just aren’t THAT unlucky unless someone really is out to get them.) So I had a pretty good guess fairly on who was doing the dirty deeds – I just didn’t have the whys, the hows or the wherefores.

Which also frustrated me because I thought that at least one of the main characters, probably not Theo herself but either her older brother Gus or his friend Mac.

And that’s the point where I worked out that the part of the story that was not working out for this reader was that the entire house of cards relies on the protagonist’s innocence and naivete in order to work at all. And since the story is told from her perspective we get a lot of that naivete to the point where I just wanted to shake some sense into her. It’s not that she’s too stupid to live, it’s that she’s young and has led a rather peculiarly sheltered life in the remoter parts of an entirely different country.

Gus or Mac should have had a better perspective on just how high the terrible coincidences were piling up, and just how unlikely that was, as they are both a decade older than Theo and have, particularly in Mac’s case, considerably more knowledge of the way the world really does and doesn’t work. But the way the story works means that they are dealing with most of the events through what Theo tells them, and her naivete bleeds all over everything.

Plus, they are both trying really, really hard to protect her – even from her frequently misguided self.

In the end, I think the whole story and the way that it works can be summed up by the tagline that the most prominent group of conspiracy aficionados uses in their messaging, “We know what we know.”

The full quote, from Nicolaus Copernicus, feels like it’s a key to understanding the conspiracy theorists in the book as well as the book itself and how it hides its real mystery in plain sight.

“To know that we know what we know, and to know that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.” Clinging to what they know, the conspiracy theorists have no clue about all the many, many things they don’t know. Neither does Theo. And neither, as the book takes us on a not-so-magical mystery tour of the way that Theo’s, Gus’ and Mac’s lives go so very, very wrong, does the reader – at least not until the bitterly climactic end.

This book was absolutely whackadoo crazy! And I honestly loved it.

The narration was great and I cruised through it quickly. Theo leaves law school in Australia and moves to Lawrence, Kansas to write a novel. She moves in with her brother, Gus, and develops a relationship with an older author who is subsequently murdered.

What follows is a labyrinth of conspiracy theories, preppers, police pressure, insanely powerful book agents, and more murders.

The book synopsis is a bit misleading. It says Gus gets blamed for the murder... well, that does happen, but not till like 70% into the book, and it's not even the original murder. So, for that, I am deducting a star because I kept waiting for it to happen. Also the crazy time jump at the end was a bit disorienting, with how day to day the first 80% of the book was.

Really fun, crazy plot. Definitely one I would recommend!

This one started off as your typical murder mystery as an aspiring writer tries to discover who killed her friend and best-selling author lover only to quickly devolve into an over the top conspiracy theory ladden action-driven adventure. Recommended for fans of movies like Enemy of the state and people who like creative, somewhat implausible plots. This was good on audio and definitely entertaining if not quite believable. Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an early digital and audio copy in exchange for my honest review!

The Mystery Writer is entertaining if increasingly outlandish. It’s a story about a conspiracy theory that’s written as though the author is meant to be critical of conspiracy theories, but ends up creating an absolutely outlandish one in the form of this story. Early on I was intrigued, but by the end I was reading just to see how ridiculous it could get.

Katherine Littrell did a great job narrating the audiobook.

Thank you Sulari Gentill, Poisoned Pen Press, Dreamscape Media, and NetGalley for providing this ARC for review consideration. All opinions expressed are my own.

THE MYSTERY WRITER by Sulari Gentill and narrated by Katherine Littrell was a mystery of conspiracy theories and literary identities.

I will be candid and express my delight in having a story with familiar places, as this takes place primarily in Lawrence, Kansas. I have been to the @ravenbookstore that is mentioned as well as a couple other little places which lent an extra level of interest and excitement!

The mystery aspect was layered and something that felt unique. Our main character, Theo leaves Australia and comes to her brother who lives in Lawrence. It feels like a perfect place to escape and concentrate on her writing. When she discovers the body of her mentor, who recently became a bit more, she is sucked into the world of the literary labyrinth and may not come out.

I enjoyed all the conspiracy theories presented in chat room formats. I couldn't tell how it would all come together, and I would have never guessed the final denouement or the way it came about. I enjoyed the trip down this rabbit hole!

I also have to mention that Littrell did a fantastic job going back and forth from Australian and US accents. It was mostly from Theo's perspective, but not always, and the other characters were voiced so well. A great audio choice if you can keep up with the plot!

Thank you @netgalley & @dreamscape_media for the ALC that will be published on March 19th!

DNF'd at 50%. I really wanted to enjoy this book after loving The Woman in the Library by the same author. While that one had an interesting mystery with a fun meta quality to it, I'm not getting sucked in to this story in the same way. For some reason I don't care at all about the main character and the multiple mysteries she's finding herself in the middle of, maybe because she's seeming helpless and like she has no autonomy over the situation. The side conspiracy-theory elements don't interest me either, and I don't love not knowing how they're going to tie into the main storyline. Without either of the two parts of the book capturing my attention, I don't feel much of a reason to continue. This could be a me problem, and there could be a satisfying end to the mystery if you do become attached to the characters, but unfortunately I'm not going to get there. I will say the audiobook is well-done and I would recommend the audio version to those interested.

This book was a trip and there were enough current/real-life aspects that you could kind of see this happening today! Terrifying! This was my 2nd book by Sulari Gentill and it was even better than the first one I read, so now I adding all of her books to my TBR! I can't wait to read another book by her.

#TheMysteryWriter
#NetGalley

This started really strong, I loved the narration and it felt like a cinematic style mystery with the conspiracy theory angel.

However, the ending was as a big mess, it needs to be edited and reworked, too many time jumps and confusion and when I finished I just felt annoyed.

Thank you for the ARC all opinions are my own.

This book started out very interesting, I liked the premise of it and thought it was a great story. However I felt too much happened at the beginning and then in the middle there were things that I felt were missed and rushed over. Too much didn’t make sense on what happened and how police/family handled things. It picked back up in the end and I did appreciate how it ended. Again a great idea for a book, I just felt the mid section lacked too much.

This book started off slow, but I gave it a chance and kept reading. I am glad I did, I ended up liking the book

This is told in third person and follows Theo, a young woman who has ventured from her studies in Australia to visit her brother, Gus, a criminal defense attorney and partner in a law firm located in Kansas. Theo is ready to pursue her dream of being a mystery writer.

The story is more of a quiet, slow burn suspense than a thriller. The chapters are occasionally interspersed with commentary from online conspiracy theory forums. The audiobook is narrated by Katherine Littrell. This was my first audiobook listen by this narrator. I found the narrator’s voice for most of the characters to be pleasant and distinctive.

Parts of this were not for me as I have a low tolerance threshold for conspiracy theorists and doomsday preppers; however, the relationship that developed between Theo and Dan as well as her brother and his friend Mac pulled me in enough to speculate about the motives behind the murders and subsequent events.

Unfortunately, I had issues with Theo ignoring red flags all over the place and not communicating at times when she knew she should be speaking up. I also had some other issues with the story from some later abrupt time jumping, odd emphasis on guns and strange reactions from her brother’s law firm. Then the mystery plot devolved into a scenario that I’m at a loss to describe without spoilers but just felt ridiculous to me.

Thank you to Netgalley, Poisoned Pen Press and Dreamscape Media for a copy provided for an honest review.

Authors, beware of your agents and read the fine line of your contracts! I'm sure it would be amazing to find an agent, especially a good one, but damn, agents and agency in this book are rather disturbing. You don't want be the shackled to your desk and write novels until you lose your sense of self and creativity

Theodosia (such a name btw) decided to quit law school and write the novel she always wanted to. Moving in with her brother in the US, she thought she would be able to go heads down and finish that book. After spending useless hours at home, she started to go to this café and claim it as her office. There she met a bestseller author and her creative process went light speed. Her book was ready but she could not get anything from this author on his process. One day, she decided to ask if he could recommend her to his agent. After that what happened could be a book itself

While some characters did not have to be in the story and storylines around them were all over the place, it was a fast read. We had domestic violence, sexual harassment, cult behavior all in one place. On one hand I see why they had to be brought on, but on the other it was too much.