A Dash of Death is a solid cozy mystery. It starts at a party where reporter Samantha Warren, reeling over a bad breakup, is serving up the homemade bitters she’d made as party favours for her (now-cancelled) wedding. Unfortunately, one of the guests dies after ingesting oleander from one of the cocktails, and his estranged wife, Gabby, sues Samantha for damages.

It’s a classic set up for a cozy mystery, and I liked Samantha as a character. Much of her character arc focuses on her learning to become more confident in trusting her instincts, and I love how her love life, her career, and the current mystery, all play into that growth. I also like how she figures out how to turn her personal and professional disasters into viable next steps for her career, and I thought her journey into embracing her interest in mixology felt relatable.

The mystery itself felt a bit of a stretch at times, not so much because of the suspects or the reveal, but because I couldn’t quite understand why Samantha was so emotionally involved in the case. While she did start out as a prime suspect, the police switched their suspicions to Gabby fairly early on, and much of Samantha’s investigation is because she wants to prove Gabby’s innocence. Partly, she feels sorry for Gabby’s teenage daughter, and partly, she also gets a good vibe from Gabby and doesn’t think she could be a killer. The thing is, they initially met when Gabby tried to sue Samantha, so Gabby’s a major reason that Samantha’s involved in this mess in the first place. So while I can understand that Samantha believes Gabby is innocent, I don’t get why she’s so determined to prove it, even when it means risking her own neck.

Apart from that, the author did a good job of providing us with multiple red herrings and viable other suspects. The big reveal felt a bit anti-climactic, mostly because I thought some of the other suspects had more compelling backstories, but I didn’t guess the bad guy’s identity or motive at all, which was good.

The romantic subplot is cute, and I thought the love interest seemed sweet. That part of the story didn’t quite hook me as strongly as it could have, though, mostly because so much of this novel seems to set up a love triangle between Samantha, her ex, and the new guy, and while I appreciate the author delving into Samantha’s complex and unresolved feelings about her ex, the love triangle itself never quite felt believable. So I look forward to see how the romance subplot expands in later books.

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Thank you to Crooked Lane Books for an e-galley in exchange for an honest review.

I love legal thrillers — John Grisham was my entry into adult novels — so when I saw that a former Chief Justice of Canada had written one, I was eager to check it out.

Criminal defense lawyer Jilly Truitt is hired to defend Vera Quentin, a woman accused of killing her chronically ill mother. Vera’s mom is on record as having requested medically assisted death from her daughter multiple times, and the general consensus is that Vera finally gave in. Vera’s husband thinks she should just go for a plea deal, but Vera refuses to confess to the crime.

As a legal thriller, Denial is a solid novel. The court case at the core of the story was interesting, and the author’s experience in the courtroom offers interesting glimpses into how court cases unfold in Canada. I also like the insights into lawyers’ strategies, and how moments that, to my layperson brain, seemed fairly innocuous, may actually impact legal matters. The mystery itself was also nice and twisty. The reveals, as they unfolded, took me by surprise, and it was nice to look back at the end, and see events with the truth in mind.

That being said, I found the writing a bit dry, and as much as I liked the glimpses into the Canadian legal system during the courtroom scenes, the book never quite hooked me. Part of it was that there was too much going on beyond the main story, but little room to establish the emotional heft necessary to make these subplots mean anything. I was honestly surprised to find out that this was only the second novel in the Jilly Truitt series, since these subplots and their respective payoffs all felt like the culmination of multiple novels’ worth of build-up.

We get a glimpse of some of the other cases that Jilly’s working on, and how they intersect with her personal life in some significant ways. There are also some truly dramatic moments that would create lasting impact on Jilly’s life. But while I understood on an intellectual level why these storylines are urgent, they never quite pulled me in. Which is a shame, because I think there’s rich material in the storyline about Jilly’s second chance romance, and also in the drama between her and the prosecutor, which is tangentially connected to a past story about her biological father. There was also a subplot about a criminal Jilly defended, and a young woman in danger, which keeps Jilly up at night, and also intersects tangentially with the central case because of its timing. All of this has the potential to be fascinating, but the execution fell flat for me.

With the central case, I also found the focus on denial to be somewhat tiresome after a while. Jilly muses several times about the possibility that Vera is in denial about having killed her mom, but that felt thin to me. Why jump through so many psychological hoops to come up with the possibility that Vera’s in deep denial, when there are other, easier, and more logical conclusions to draw? While I can appreciate that Jilly’s job does require her to jump through all those mental hoops, it just felt implausible, and it was a struggle to keep suspending disbelief just to stay in sync with the Jilly’s mindset. All to say — denial as a motif felt like a stretch to me, and having it come up so often felt forced.

Denial unfortunately fell flat for me, but I did enjoy the glimpse into the Canadian legal system, and Canadian courtrooms. And like I said, I didn’t predict the big reveal behind the crime, and, while I wish the novel had delved a bit more into the complexity of the ethics around medical assistance in dying, I liked that it tackled such a complex topic in the first place.

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Thank you to Simon and Schuster Canada for an e-galley in exchange for an honest review.

Brilliant book. Like the best kind of horror, The Other Black Girl takes what may be too big for words and turns it tangible. I’m not Black and can’t speak to how this will resonate with Black readers, but as an Asian woman working in a mostly-white arts and culture sector, I related hard to Nella’s need to play the game in order to succeed, while still staying out and proud about her Blackness.

The author does a good job in exploring the various ways Black women need to compromise just to survive in the workplace, which all seem miniscule at first but add up. Nella’s epiphany at the end hits hard, particularly in how it extends far beyond the fantastical horror elements that frame the story.

There’s a great passage where Hazel is massaging conditioner into Nella’s hair. The sensation reminds Nella of her mom doing the same to her as a child, and she muses on how such moments centered on hair are unique to Black mothers and daughters. The significance that hair plays in the story therefore takes on even deeper resonance. And if it hit me hard as an Asian woman, I can only imagine how much more it would strike Black readers who may have similar associations from childhood.

The only snag for me is that I wish the horror subplot had been fleshed out more. Without giving too much away… Who started it? How far does it extend? What’s the resistance group’s long-term game plan? And the reveal about a powerful white person involved – what’s their game plan? I feel like there are all these loose threads that I wanted to know more about, but just as that part of the novel’s world began expanding, the story narrows back towards its ending.

That being said, the ending still packs an emotional punch, and left me, at least, troubled and thoughtful.