Except it wasn't. Do not tease the book blogger with craft beer and pastries!
This book lost its focus right away and requires readers to accept a plot that is a mishmash of mystery, social conscious tidbits, and a truly inept armchair sleuth. Odessa Dean is from Louisiana and is a sweet as molasses Southern gal (cowboy boots t'boot) who finds herself in Brooklyn but she's naïve and believes that armed with only her love of True Crime podcasts and her ability to do a Google search that she is just as competent at solving a murder as a police detective. Um, okay.
I found it odd that the mystery is pretty much ignored for the first three-quarters of the book with more page time given to long and repeated descriptions of life in Williamsburg, NY. We get it. It's quaint. It's cute. It has artisans, breweries, and dogs, oh my! but I thought this was a cozy mystery. The murder victim is a character who is in the book for all of two seconds which is fine, but Odessa's obsession with finding the murderer of her coworker (who she just met) felt ridiculous. The shit hit the fan when, quite literally, she digs through public trash cans at a dog park on the off chance of finding a clue. That is just plain NASTY and unbelievable.
The awkward addition of trendy Millennial buzz words, the regular drops of social awareness tidbits and odd tangents (Odessa's tailoring skills, bathing a dog, how her work shirt dyed her skin or the paragraphs on seagulls going through garbage) were odd and unnecessary. Were they meant to make her quirky? I honestly don't know, but they took up valuable page time when the author could have been building her mystery.
So, this was clearly a miss for me. I should have DNF'd it, but I was hoping for a cozy mystery Hail Mary. I'll be skipping No Memes of Escape, the second book in the series.
My Rating: 2 stars
Author: Olivia Blacke
Genre: Cozy Mystery
Series: #1 in A Brooklyn Murder Mystery series
Type and Source: Trade Paperback from public library
Publisher: Berkley
First Published: February 2, 2021
Opening Line: I almost died on my way to work today.
Book Description from GoodReads: It's murder most viral in this debut mystery by Olivia Blacke.
Bayou transplant Odessa Dean has a lot to learn about life in Brooklyn. So far she's scored a rent free apartment in one of the nicest neighborhoods around by cat-sitting, and has a new job working at Untapped Books & Café. Hand-selling books and craft beers is easy for Odessa, but making new friends and learning how to ride the subway? Well, that might take her a little extra time.
But things turn more sour than an IPA when the death of a fellow waitress goes viral, caught on camera in the background of a couple's flash-mob proposal video. Nothing about Bethany's death feels right to Odessa--neither her sudden departure mid-shift nor the clues that only Odessa seems to catch. As an up-and-coming YouTube star, Bethany had more than one viewer waiting for her to fall from grace.
Determined to prove there's a killer on the loose, Odessa takes matters into her own hands. But can she pin down Bethany's killer before they take Odessa offline for good?
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