3.5/5!

Is science fiction cozy mystery a genre I didn’t know I needed in my life? Absolutely!

I love that our main character, Dorothy, is older. It instantly gave me Miss Marple and Killers of a Certain Age vibes. Dorothy is quirky and getting to know her, but also getting to know her as her memory is found implanted in a much younger body was very entertaining.

This novella is a mix of genres that I think will work for fans of both science fiction and mysteries. The science isn’t hard to grasp and while the mystery drives the plot, it doesn’t steal the show from this story creating the basis for what seems like a great series.

Heat Factor: Not even a kiss

Character Chemistry: Hints that there might be a relationship in the future

Plot: Dorothy wakes up in someone else’s body and then has a murder to solve

Overall: As a series teaser, this book succeeds admirably

When I say this book succeeds as a series teaser, here’s what I mean: we get a good sense of the atmosphere, setting, and characters. There’s a bit of a tease with a potential love interest slash antagonist (that last scene was giving me strong Sherlock / Moriarty vibes). Obviously, humans are gonna human, so there will always be a need for detectives—especially with the hint of things being not quite above board at the secret society speakeasy. But the mystery itself felt a little thin. Dorothy learns new information in a nice sequential order, which allows her to put the pieces of the story together. The twists were a bit twisty, but nothing was revealed that felt like a big shock.

In short, this felt like a taste of more to come than a fully standalone story.

So let’s talk about that taste. This book is marketed as a cozy mystery in space, and I have to be honest: I don’t read a lot of cozies. They are just too twee with their punny titles and their amateur detectives who own thriving small businesses in small towns. But I do read sci fi (with a special affinity for lesbians in space, which this is) and I have enjoyed Waite’s other books (all historical romances, so that’s a bit different) and I like a good mystery every now and again, so I went for it. I give this background about my reading habits because some of my quibbles about the execution of the mystery might come down to my lack of familiarity with the cozy, which I guess tends to be a little less twisty than the psychological thrillers I generally turn to when I am in a murder mood.

Dorothy lives on a spaceship, and has now for several hundred years. Humans now have technology to download their minds into “books,” and reprint their consciousness into a new body when the old one wears out. In the meantime, they are living a lovely utopian fantasy on board the spacecraft while waiting to finally make it to another planet. Dorothy has been in storage for a few years for various personal reasons, until one day she wakes up—in someone else’s body. And if this weren’t enough, the ship’s AI needs her to go solve a murder. And, uh, the person whose body she took may have been involved in said murder.

Dorothy then spends the book wandering around the spaceship and talking to various people—sometimes as herself, sometimes pretending to be the woman whose body she’s inhabiting—while she pieces together the relationship between said body and the corpse. There are also several scenes between Dorothy and her nephew that serve to establish the parameters of the world and open it up more broadly to future stories. The wandering and the bit with the nephew mean that there’s a ton of worldbuilding…perhaps too much for the amount of plot in this novella. There’s very little plot. But there is a knit shop.

I feel like I’m flailing about a bit, so I’ll just sum up: I enjoyed the reading experience, but didn’t feel like I had read a satisfying mystery when I closed the book.

I voluntarily read and reviewed a complimentary copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own. We disclose this in accordance with 16 CFR §255.

This review is also available at The Smut Report

I enjoyed this cozy novella. A murder happens on a colony ship where people's minds are supposed to live forever. A ship detective puts the clues together in classic cozy mystery style, and the author included a couple tropes from the genre, which were fun to think about in a sci-fi setting. I would read more from this author.

I really enjoyed this one! I love a mystery and the setting is so interesting. Also all of the gays. Love a book where no one is straight. I hope Waite writes more of these. I'll definitely be on the look out!

I really enjoyed this novella, I found it to be an enthralling and wonderfully crafted mystery that blends clever storytelling with rich, atmospheric writing. Waite's intricate plot and well-developed characters keep readers hooked from start to finish. The dynamic between the leads is both heartfelt and engaging, adding an emotional depth that makes the suspense even more compelling. With its perfect mix of intrigue and heart, this book is a must-read for fans of cozy mysteries and romantic suspense alike!

4.5 stars - A cozy mystery in space

Ship’s detective Dorothy Gentleman wakes up in a body that isn’t hers. Another woman is dead, and someone has destroyed the “book” in which Dorothy’s own mind had been stored for the last several years. On a generation ship where everyone is used to dying and waking up again in a “blank” (essentially a body cloned from their own), it’s disconcerting to find herself inhabiting an unfamiliar body, but Dorothy gamely sets about investigating the other woman’s death, the destruction of her own book, and just why Gloria, the woman whose body she now inhabits, was out and about during a magnetic-storm lockdown.

Dorothy is an engaging first-person narrator. Regardless of her physical age, she comes across as a capable, observant, and intelligent middle-aged woman. She’s practical and level-headed, with a wry sense of humor and a tendency to avoid sentiment—especially when it comes to her brilliant but sometimes feckless nephew, Rutherford (or “Ruthie”), of whom she is secretly very fond. She solves the mystery quite handily, aided by Ruthie, his equally brilliant lover John, and Ferry, the AI entity who runs the ship.

The overall premise is fascinating. I’m interested to see how the worldbuilding develops and interacts with the mystery plots over future books. A victim who can live again gives a different twist to both murder and investigation! I do hope that the next installment will be longer, though. This one felt almost too short; I wanted to spend more time with Dorothy, Ferry, Ruthie, and John. I’d also like to see Dorothy contend with a more complex plot—one with more red herrings, false clues, and obstacles to solving it. There’s scope for some deeper character exploration as well. But I found the book delightful despite its brevity, and I’m really looking forward to the next one.

The blurb said “Becky Chambers meets Miss Marple” and if that’s not up my alley I don’t know what is. A murder mystery on a spaceship? Count me in. This novella has a strong sense of setting, with gorgeous sci-fi imagery describing the generation ship, called the Fairweather, in detail. The world we step into in this book is distinct and immersive from the jump, and I found it fascinating. The characters were also interesting and enjoyable. Between the detailed setting, the characterization and the cozy tone, I think that the comparison to Becky Chambers is an apt one. I was less clear on large-scale worldbuilding things like where the ship was going and why, but as it was largely inconsequential to the story, I was happy to just go along and not worry about it too much. The novella was too short for there to be any really complex twists and turns in the mystery, but that was fine – it was still interesting, and anything too complex in a story this length and it would have felt rushed and lost that cozy feel, and had less space for the worldbuilding and character details I enjoyed so much. I was pleased to see that Goodreads put this as the first in a series, and I really hope that’s accurate, because I would be very happy to inhabit this world again.

Representation: LGBTQIA+ characters

It brings me such joy to see this marked as the first in the new Dorothy Gentleman series, because I am already looking forward to Dorothy's next case! 

At the opening of this novella, Dorothy awakens in an elevator during a magnetic storm on the HMS Fairweather...in someone else's body. Not to mention, there has been a murder on board this interstellar passenger liner making its way to a new Earth. AND someone has been purposely damaging memory books (literal backups of passengers' minds) in the Library. Are these events connected or separate crimes? It's a good thing that Dorothy happens to be one of the ship's detectives. Thus begins her hunt for answers...

I can definitely see why this sci-fi mystery genre blend was marketed as 'Miss Marple in space'. While Dorothy does share Marple's keen eye for human nature and a love of knitting, I would argue Dorothy is her own character and a modernized spinster sleuth in the best way possible. And I loved following her character's perspective. I also enjoyed the blending of science fiction with mystery, and I found the two intertwined nicely together. The technology, the spaceship setting, and the culture created from people living hundreds of years en route to a new version of Earth...all of it affected the crimes at hand. And I think that makes it a true genre BLEND. 

My only complaint is that I wish the book were longer. Understandably, this is a novella, so sacrifices must be made when it comes to development and description. With that said, the ending did feel slightly rushed, and I would have liked more space on the page allocated to developing motive for the culprit. As that was lacking, and we had little time with all suspects, I am hesitant to call this plot a fair play mystery. 

A fast-paced, easy-to-read palette cleanser for quozy (queer + cozy) mystery readers! 

Actual Rating: 4.0 stars 
Original Pub Date: 18 March 2025
Reading Format: ebook

Thank you NetGalley and Tor for an E-ARC copy in exchange for this honest review!

I was quite excited to get an ARC for Murder by Memory by Olivia Waite (on sale March 18!), because I am already a huge fan of her queer romances (Hen Fever is a DELIGHT). So when I heard her newest novella was not only sci fi, but a cozy murder mystery (two genres that I think need more crossover), I was very excited, and my anticipation paid off. Murder by Memory is, as advertised, incredibly cozy, with main character Dorothy Gentlemen doing some old-fashioned sleuthing as she attempts to solve a murder in a magnetic storm, figure out if her nephew needs a talking to, and sneak in some flirting in her spare time. The world-building is fun, the mystery is tightly-paced, and the biggest downfall is that it’s not longer because I zipped right through this and could have read more.

Our story begins when Dorothy Gentleman, ship’s detective, wakes up in a lift in a body that is not her own. This is surprising to her, because she wasn’t scheduled to be re-printed for quite a few years yet, and it should have been in her familiar body. This is because on the Fairweather the would-be colonists have solved the problem of knowledge-loss and skills degradation by becoming functionally immortal. At any point, you can save your brain and personality as a print in your “book” in the ship’s library, and when your current body gets old, you can print another copy. If life in a space ship grows stale, or the weight of time grows too heavy, one can simply leave behind an order to have a little break before being re-printed. Dorothy, recovering from a complicated break-up, was supposed to be on that break, but is put in a new body because there’s been a murder. There’s also a magnetic storm, so the ship’s brain can’t help her and everything is locked down. She has to figure out what she’s missed and how to navigate operating in an unfamiliar body at the same time. All in the life of a detective in space.

I thought Waite was particularly deft with the world-building in a novella, which I know she has past experience in doing. Because this is a cozy setting about essentially a locked-room murder (no outsiders on a spaceship), a lot of the hardships and horrors of space have been waved away with convenient technology, which I was ready to embrace in the nature of a Star Trek-like society. Sometimes we can read about luxury space travel instead of a Weyland-Yutani future as a treat! It was precisely what I wanted to read about on a cold winter night, but I also appreciated the inventive way that Waite introduced conflict and obstacles into this seemingly-serene environment, and we get all of this with a minimum of clunky exposition that left me wildly curious about the implications in greater ship society.

Dorothy was also a great character. Largely unflappable through the weight of long experience and pragmatic in the classic way of the singular detective, Dorothy nonetheless maintains enough joie de vivre to be interested in what changes have happened to neighborhoods she has not visited in a while and to be delighted by small normal things like a yarn shop and a particularly fine piece of fiber work. Not entirely over the complex circumstances of her breakup, Dorothy can also still feel a spark of interest in a beautiful woman who she encounters in the course of her investigation. Although matters do not progress very far, I can’t wait to see further developments in future books.

Murder by Memory comes out on March 18,, so run out and order it now, so we can be sure to get lots of additional books! It’s a cute, cozy mystery with some comforting sci-fi world-building, and as a novella, it’s a great little read when you just need a small break for a story. I’m definitely going to put any future installments on my list immediately.

I loved Murder by Memory! It was a very different reading experience than Waite's Feminine Pursuits series, particularly how much worldbuilding there was (memory books, experience cocktails!) in just a few pages. The cozy sci-fi aesthetic with a side of body horror will likely be a hit with fans of Becky Chambers. My only complaint is how short it was, but the plot was wrapped up nicely, I just wanted more time with the characters. I'm particularly excited to get to know our our protagonist better, detective Dorothy Gentleman, and seeing how her relationships develop as the series goes on!

Dorothy Gentleman is a passenger on the HMS Fairweather, a ship traveling through space for centuries on route to settling a new home. To accommodate the long journey, passengers preserve all their memories in the Library, so if their bodies fail, their minds can be added to a healthy body and they are reborn. However, when Dorothy wakes up after a couple of years of voluntary stasis, she finds herself not in her own body… but in someone else’s.

It appears that something damaged Dorothy’s memory book, and as one of the ship’s investigators (and the aunt of one of the ship’s programmers), emergency protocol had her awakened and put in the closest available body. As Dorothy investigates the murder, she finds a number of possible suspects. Things are complicated by the fact that Dorothy doesn’t appear as herself, but as Gloria Vowell, the woman whose body she now inhabits — a woman who has an unexpected connection to the case. Even more frightening, Dorothy learns that the damage to the Library may not have been accidental, but by design. Without the memory books, when someone dies or is killed, there is no way to bring them back. But Dorothy is nothing if not determined, and she is out to find the killer before it is too late.

Ok, so hear me out. Cozy mystery… in space. Awesome, right? I was hooked on this one from the blurb and I think this first book in the Dorothy Gentleman series delivers nicely on its premise. I really enjoyed the way the small-town vibe of many cozies translates to this space ship. We have almost a locked-room scenario, as the killer is obviously aboard the ship, and a lovely older woman who is investigating. Author Olivia Waite really enhances the story with some creative world building. This group is on a journey that will take many lifetimes, so they have sort of a technology-based reincarnation. Old body worn out or injured? Download your memories into a fresh one! But what then happens when those memory books are damaged and there is no way to bring someone back again? The premise not only allows for a creative mystery, but also to explore the idea of mortality. Here is a passage from after Dorothy realizes that someone is unable to be brought back:

I shivered. Gone. It was one thing for a body to die: three hundred years of dying and waking up and dying again had meant all of us were more or less used to the idea of a bodily death at this point. But for a whole person to be gone — all their memories, all their skills, the essence of who they were — for it to be wiped from the record completely, with no way of ever getting it back…

The world building also allows for some clever elements, like the fact that Dorothy is investigating in Gloria’s body, which allows her access and anonymity that often helps her investigation. There is also the fact that Dorothy is an older woman (though I’m not clear on her actual age) and she is temporarily in the body of a much younger one. So suddenly all those aches and pains of age are gone as she lives in this much younger body.

I think the mystery is interesting, and like I said, the world building here allows for a lot of cleverness and unique twists. And I loved the fact that it all takes place on this giant ship. Waite gives a lot of great detail that really brings the setting to life. However, I do think the investigation lacked a little intensity, even for a cozy mystery. There isn’t a lot of action, versus talking through the resolution, as Dorothy learns about the killer and how they accomplished the crime. So even though I didn’t expect high suspense, I did find this was perhaps just a little too relaxed and I wanted a bit more from the climax.

Just for clarity, I wouldn’t consider this a true romance and Dorothy is not involved in a romantic relationship (though that may come further in the series). However, she is a widow who lost her wife in a way that did not allow for her to be brought back in a new body, and Dorothy put herself into a stasis of sorts to give herself some time to recover emotionally. Almost all the side characters of significance are involved in same sex partnerships, so this a cast full of queer characters, including Dorothy’s nephew.

I thought this was a really great start to an interesting new series. I loved Dorothy as our lead and POV character, and the setting and unique world building adds a great twist. I am really excited about this series and looking forward to more.

A solid begging to a new series. I enjoyed reading this quick, fun cozy mystery set in space. The character set up is intriguing and the mystery was well paced. I’m looking forward to future books!

Finished this cozy sci-fi novella in a day! I give it a solid four stars and highly recommend it for anyone looking for a low-stakes mystery and a quick escape from real life.

Dorothy Gentleman is a detective on a ship; an entire city of people bound for an unknown world. The voyage has taken over three centuries, but the passengers keep their memories in a library and can upload those memories to a new body the ship provides when the old one dies. This novella reminded me of one of my favorite episodes of Doctor Who (minus the horrific flesh-eating shadows). When the ship encounters a solar storm, Dorothy wakes up in the body of someone else. There’s been a murder and someone’s shockingly trying to wipe out the memory banks in the library. The relationship between the victim and the body Dorothy’s inhabiting complicates matters, as well as the solar storm cutting Dorothy off from her usual resources. Dorothy really wants to sit down and knit, but nevertheless she‘s determined to solve the murder and find out why someone would want to destroy the memories stored in the library and permanently delete someone.

I recognized Olivia Waite’s name because I read one of her queer historical romances and enjoyed it. Everyone in this book is queer, but sadly the only romance our main character Dorothy’s getting is the heartbreak of her tragic backstory. A few of the side characters do seem to be in healthy and happy relationships, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed that Olivia Waite might return to this universe and give our ship detective another intriguing mystery and perhaps a second chance at love. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this delightful novella!

Olivia Waite’s Murder by Memory arrives at a peak time for SFF murder mystery, and even more particularly for space murder mystery. If you love this genre as I do, you know that we’ve been blessed with a proliferation of fantastic books along these lines: Mur Lafferty’s Six Wakes, Tade Thompson’s Far From the Light of Heaven, Victor Manibo’s Escape Velocity, and S.A. Barnes’s Dead Silence, to name just a few. Murder by Memory enters a thriving field with confidence and aplomb.

Our detective, Dorothy Gentleman, is accustomed to waking up in a fresh body. As a traveler aboard the generation ship Fairweather, she shares certain privileges with the other passengers. Their memories and consciousness will be regularly backed up into memory books, stored in the ship’s library. When they inevitably succumb to old age (or die in some other way), their consciousness will be downloaded into a freshly produced copy of their original body, and they can proceed with another iteration of their life. If they prefer to take a break from living—as who wouldn’t, now and then?—they can elect to keep their consciousness stashed away in the memory book for a few years. After a painful loss, that’s exactly what Dorothy has done. So it’s a bit of a shock to find that she’s been downloaded into a new body ahead of schedule. Worse, it’s not even her body. Worst of all, the person who had the body before her is probably a murderer.

A woman called Janet—the long-time business partner of the body Dorothy finds herself in—is found dead in the aftermath of a magnetic storm that rattled the ship’s systems. Janet appears to have drowned herself in a bathtub full of memory liquor. But Dorothy doesn’t buy it, and her chief suspect is the person whose body she’s walking around in, a woman named Gloria Vowell who had absolutely no business wandering around the ship in the midst of a magnetic storm.

Olivia Waite made her name in historical romance, and she now comes skipping across genre lines with a clear love and enthusiasm for the spaces she’s now writing in: Our detective recalls Dorothy Sayers by name and Miss Marple by nature (complete with a beloved nephew), and a yarn shop—cozy mysteries’ favorite type of business establishment—features prominently. On the SFF side, our background is a generation ship riddled with the morally gray queer folks of which contemporary SFF is so fond. Too, Waite’s got a wonderful eye for details to make her imagined world feel lived in: Our detective remarks that although no light comes in through the windows of each cabin, all the passengers—refugees from Earth—still tend to put their desks below the window, “as if we were careful to leave space in our lives for the weather we never experienced on board ship.”

Despite its brief length, Murder by Memory feels instantly welcoming, its setting and characters at once familiar and unique. Waite’s fully invested in the speculative elements of her novel. The trope of the generation ship is a longtime favorite of mine, because I love it when the characters are stuck with each other and cannot leave (see also: boarding school). Waite has put a fun spin on it by making all the passengers functionally immortal. Imagine being on a very large road trip that lasts your entire life, and then you die and you can finally get away from all those damn people you’re tired of, and then you wake up alive and do the whole thing all over again. And again. And again. Being honest, I’d probably do a murder, too. My defense at the murder trial would be the same defense I use for everything: I am an introvert and a Taurus. No jury on earth would convict.

The biggest clue that Waite is coming from the romance genre is how vividly interested she is in her characters’ experience of embodiment. Dorothy Gentleman keeps being brought up short by her discomfiture at finding herself in a body other than her own. “Imagine going to the washroom to be sick and having someone else’s sick come out,” she thinks, upon first awaking. “I came very close to making this more than a metaphor.” Later, when she realizes that someone has properly, actually, forever died, their memory book wiped from existence along with their working consciousness, she has an acutely physical reaction to the idea. “My stomach—[her host body’s] stomach, oh god—lurched. I had one very bad moment when it felt like my body and my mind were fighting to tear apart from each other.”

On the more pleasant side, if you are into mind-altering experiences (I am not), is the alcohol of choice on board Fairweather, a thing called memory liquor. It was invented as a way to retain specific memories and experiences, even small ones, that might be lost or degraded over the years of travel. “Memories of Earth, the kind we couldn’t make on board the Fairweather, sorted by type and distilled into distinct colors and flavors. You could mix them like any cocktail.” When mixed well, memory liquor creates a distinct somatic experience, more vivid than the kind of memory that takes place purely in the mind. “This,” Dorothy thinks after drinking a cocktail made by a particularly skilled mixologist, “felt like the kind of memory the body carried. ”

Murder by Memory is quite a linear mystery, without much in the way of red herrings or side quests. Dorothy follows clues as they arise and unravels the mystery without too much trouble—though Waite cleverly includes a little spike at the end, to complicate what we thought we knew about some of the characters. But the book leaves alluring hints at what’s to come future installments in the series. We still have plenty to learn about memory liquor, Dorothy’s nephew and his partner, and the yarn shop proprietor—among others—and it’s clear Waite knows more than she’s telling. Wry, strange, and generous, Murder by Memory is a fantastic series opener, with a vivid setting and intriguing characters that leave readers wanting more.

“Everyone on the Fairweather had a book and a body: the Library held a copy of your mind in one while you walked around in the other.”

This is a cozy mystery novella set on a sentient spaceship which has been tasked with transporting humans across the universe over the course of millennia. I found the futuristic sci-fi elements intriguing, especially the concepts of a library of lives and memories as cocktails. I liked Dorothy a lot, especially since she managed to be both a doting aunt and a complex character with her own goals and desires. Also, I have a soft spot for sentient ships and Ferry was delightful.

For me, the appeal of this story had more to do with Dorothy and her life as a detective in space and the realities of a society in which people are essentially immortal than it did with the mystery itself. This was probably partially because the book is very short—more of a novella than a novel. This meant there was only so much time to devote to the crime plot. That being said, I really enjoyed this little book. I’m hoping there will be more Dorothy Gentleman books in the future.

Murder by Memory is a novella that packs a lot into its short length with a mystery set on a generational ship, the Fairweather, where death doesn't have to be the end as long as a person's memories are properly backed up. During an electric storm, Dorothy awakens from a long rest after her previous lifetime, but not in her own body. She is one of the ship's detectives and this case is particularly important since someone is not only killing bodies which can be replaced, but also deleting minds from the storage library. I enjoyed the cozy mystery aspect of the story and also the interesting science fiction world building of the story which includes drinks which can bring to life memories like summer thunderstorms. I hope we see more of Dorothy and the Fairweather in the future. Fan's of Waite's Feminine Pursuits series of historical lesbian romances, The Lady’s Guide to Celestial Mechanics, The Hellion's Waltz, and The Care and Feeding of Waspish Widows will enjoy the bit of romance that Waite also infuses into her Murder by Memory plot.

Thank you Tordotcom for the gifted copy.

Murder by Memory
Olivia Waite
Publishing Date: March 18, 2025
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This was a really enjoyable Sci-Fi novella. Sci-Fi is not my most read genre so I always love when I step outside my comfort zone and am pleasantly surprised. This is the first book in what will be a series, and plan to check out the next one!

Dorothy is our FMC and is a detective aboard an interstellar passenger liner in space. She wakes up in the wrong body and discovers that someone has been murdered. On top of that, someone is also erasing the memory books that are used to move people from one life to the next.

Read this if you enjoy:
🪐 Space and Science-Filled
🪐 Cozy Mystery
🪐 Locked Room (space craft?)
🪐 Older FMC
🪐 Queer Rep
🪐 Books within a book (Memory Book Library)
🪐 Short Quick Read

A absolutely charming cozy mystery! I thought it was a strong enough sci-fi to keep me, a seasoned sci-fi enthusiast, entertained while still not being too technical to scare off sci-fi novices that are more interesting in the cozy aspect. I found the knitting shop to be an especially fun detail.

Dorothy Gentleman is a passenger on a luxurious interstellar generation ship. She is awakened into a new body by the ship's AI when a murder is committed. As the ship's favorite detective, she is called upon to discover how and why the erasure of the victim's memory was deleted. This is complicated by her erratic nephew and the personal history of her new body. I was especially entertained by the giddy ship AI and was disappointed when it recovered its dignity. This was a delightful cozy mystery--in space! on a luxury liner! It even has a knitting shop. Because when you are travelling for hundreds of years you must have a hobby. This was a quick, fun read. I hope it turns into a series.I would rate this 4 1/2 stars if I could. My only quibble is that it is too short.

Murder by Memory was a home run in my book! Olivia Waite delightfully knits together the comfort of a whodunnit detective tale with the allure of a novel sci-fi setting.

Dorothy Gentleman, our sharp and likable protagonist, is traveling on a spaceship headed for another planet. For the duration of the very lengthy journey, each passenger’s “memory book” is uploaded to the ship and periodically updated, so that passengers can receive new bodies as time passes.

At the beginning of this novella, Dorothy wakes up, not to a new body, but inside the body of a fellow passenger on the spaceship; just as disturbingly, she wakes up to a crime scene. Dorothy begins to investigate, but the situation poses a special challenge when there’s a possibility that the body Dorothy is inhabiting might have committed the crime!

I don’t know what impressed me more— Waite’s fascinating futuristic setting and “memory book” premise, or her very cleverly constructed murder mystery. This mashup was exactly my jam, and I’m psyched that Waite has two sequels in the works!

Highly recommend this yarn to anyone looking for an excellently-written cozy comfort read or a fun mystery to unravel. (I suppose I should mention that Dorothy is a knitter; hence the puns).

Sincere thanks to Tordotcom for the eARC! Murder by Memory is out today.