Member Reviews
This series is so much fun. If Veronica Mars left a hole in your soul, this series and Dahlia Moss will help to fill it. Dahlia is so much fun to spend time with and her adventures are engaging and often hilarious. I can't wait for more stories with Dahlia and highly recommend this compelling story.
I enjoyed this book. It isn't my usual cup of tea but I was intrigued and glad that I received a copy.
This book is hilarious. This entire series is hilarious but the last part of the book decided to crank up the insanity. Dahlia finds herself being an industrial spy for a entertainingly crazy people. So much of the book was just watching the crazy happen.
In the end, it felt like one part of Dahlia's story is over but we could another another chapter in her life. Hopefully.
Personally, I was not happy how the love triangle ended but that was just a personal preference.
This irreverent, interesting read is silly in the way something like Scrubs is funny. Characters take themselves, each other and the situations seriously yet never go into the sophomoric. Loved the narrative and really had fun with this very different read
I received and ARC of this via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
This was the first Dahlia Moss book I've read and she's such a great character. She's smart (obviously, she's a detective), hilarious, and just so refreshingly out of the box. The whole cast of characters really brings together such a fun light mystery with just so many interesting personalities. I would honestly have never guessed at the ending either which was a nice plus.
I really loved the artwork, it just added such a great touch. I started with the ARC which unfortunately didn't have any of the artwork but then coincidentally, I managed to take it out of my local library so I could finally see what I was missing. For some reason, I wanted to see what flowchart she was referring to and I got a chuckle seeing the side by side. You can also never go wrong with pictures of unicorns.
I appreciated the humour in this and it was actually a great story as well. I would definitely recommend and I will be reading up on more Dahlia Moss books in the future. So much fun!
Dahlia Moss is hired to be an industry spy. Her job is to work as a temp at a software game development company and acquire the information her client wants. Mainly, the client wants to know what is taking so long for a game to be developed and they want the code to see what the problem is. However, once Dahlia is at the company, a couple of other issues arise, namely a mystery whistleblower and a dead body in the store room.
The third book in the Dahlia Moss mystery series. This is the first book I have read in this series, and it was a quick and entertaining cozy mystery.
Silly and light. Many crazy escapades occur along the way to Dahlia solving the mystery, but that was the fun of this book. Good for fans of contemporary cozies with kooky characters.
Humorous, sarcastic, rebellious, but mostly funny.
In this third installment of the Dahlia Moss Mysteries, you can expect the unexpected with a twist you wont see coming.
What is it about?
Dahlia Moss is studying to be a private detective. She is still recovering from a concussion when she gets asked to go under cover at an app game writing company in order to investigate how they are so far behind deadline.
This is book 3 in the Dahlia Moss series, but you do not have to have read the previous installments for this book to make sense. Everyone including Dahlia gets an introduction.
Was it good?
The story itself was interesting, although at its climax it had crossed the line to silly. This is a pretty quick-moving mystery with lots of zany characters, and the book itself was quick to read.
There really isn't any character development, and no life lessons learned. This book is meant to be fun to read. It didn't make me laugh out loud, but it did amuse me.
I liked this third book in the series best, because the heroine and the series both seemed to have calmed down a little, focusing on figuring out what’s gone wrong instead of dropping trends to a distracting degree.
Dahlia has been enlisted as an industrial spy, only the industry is video games. There’s a local development company, and their remote owner wants to know why their new game is behind schedule. Dahlia becomes their receptionist with the goal of snagging a copy of the code.
Everyone at the company is exhausted, and the previous receptionist is missing. Someone is posting dirty laundry about the company on the internet. Then Dahlia finds a dead body in the supply closet. Toss in an unexpected pregnancy, a visit from an internet gaming journalist digging for dirt, and the boss’ drug collection, and you have quite the chaos. Only it’s chaos a lot of people will find understandable, given how today’s digital industries operate.
Do not read this book if you have no tolerance for narrators going on about how they’re feeling, with wisecracks about what they’re seeing. But if you enjoy smart-aleck commentary of that kind — in the right mood, I do — it’s quite enjoyable to see Dahlia try to make sense of a stressed software development company. There are well-meaning programmers pushed to their limit, a woman supposedly in charge who’s undercut by the impossible demands of her new bosses, a charming but devious figurehead, and the guy from the main office whom no one trusts. This is an environment that many readers will be able to relate to, which made the hijinks more entertaining.
The revelations are surprising, unguessable, yet hang together coherently. There are plenty of pop culture references, but the emphasis here, unlike in earlier volumes, is more on character-driven comedy and twists, which I appreciated.
This is the third installment of Dahlia Moss mysteries & of course follows Dahlia Moss. Dahlia is a detective in training and she decides to take a sketchy job spying on a game company.
I absolutely loved this book. I read the first installment of these books (The Unfortunate Decisions of Dahlia Moss) and absolutely fell in love. When I saw this one, I knew I had to get my hands on it. This book is told from Dahlia's perspective and is hilarious yet mysterious. I usually do not laugh out loud while reading books, maybe a small chortle, but this book had me laughing. In fact, I had to call my husband in so I could read him a few lines of the book so I had someone to laugh with. I am going to have to go back and get ahold of the second book because I missed that one and I need more Dahlia Moss in my life.
Thank you to the publisher, the author and of course Netgalley for the opportunity to read this book as an ARC.
The Questionable Behavior of Dehlia Moss by Max Wirestone is the 3rd book in the Dahlia Moss mystery series, and my first book by this author. Wow this book is like riding a crazy roller coaster that never slows down. There are so many quirky characters, that kept me laughing and reading. This book can be read as a stand alone, but I plan to go back and read the first two books in the series because I enjoyed this one so much. If you enjoy quirky and funny mysteries, I suggest you give this book a try.
I received this book in exchange for an fair and honest review.
I didn't realize this was the third in a series, but boy, what a fun, fast paced ride! The geeky games angle was played very well and didn't seemed too forced or trendy. Lots of surprises and fun.
I loved this book! I missed the second in the series, but that didn't stop this one from being hilarious. I love love love the way that Dahlia speaks directly to the reader, like she's telling them the story. It is such a different perspective. I read this one on an airplane and I desperately wanted to read bits out loud to the people around me. Highly recommended.
The Questionable Behavior of Dahlia Moss is quirky and delightful, even if I had to look the other way while our heroine steals the new game’s code for her unknown client. Murder is only murder, but IP theft is serious stuff. Oh well. Ms. Moss hasn’t stepped up to investigation as a professional, breezing through in her ad-hoc style, but she’s thinking about it, and a certain amount of this book is about deciding to take the plunge. Commitment hasn’t been the 26 year old’s strong suit, as witnessed by the lack of steady employment and some romantic confusion. She’s fond of her nominal boyfriend, Nathan (sexy biologist) but distracted by the inexplicably sort of alluring police detective (Anson). Unlike her previous adventures, this one is more madcap than mystery, despite the body she finds in the storeroom, but all the characters are fun and the seeds laid here should pay off in further stories.
This is a great book with a wonderful story and well developed characters. The story flowed very well and was very enjoyable. This book will keep you reading long into the night and you will not want to put this book down until you finish. This was such a great read and full of surprises. I voluntarily reviewed an advanced reader’s copy of this book. The free book held no determination on my personal review.
A copy of this title has been provided by the publisher VIA NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Quick disclaimer: I did not read the first 2 Dahlia Moss books before tackling this one, but I definitely plan on doing so after enjoying this one.
Geek detective Dahlia Moss investigates murder and corporate sabotage at a mobile game start-up while navigating love, friendship, and life in her 20s. The comparisons to Veronica Mars are pretty apt. Moss is sharp, likable, with serious geek cred. Plenty of pop culture and meme references abound. Ultimately, this is very much genre fiction and stays pretty light...but Moss’s strong voice and surreal goofball antics are refreshing. Fun fun fun. It’s easy for me to cheer on this smart female protagonist and I look forward to following this series.
‘The Questionable Behavior of Dahlia Moss’ will be released January 9, 2018 at booksellers big and small.
This originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader.
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I am so glad that this eARC asked me not to quote anything from the book until I could check with the published version because by the time I hit 5%, I'd already come up with a handful of candidates of quotations to start this post with, and I didn't want to have to choose.
Literally picking up where The Astonishing Mistakes of Dahlia Moss left off -- with Emily Swenson asking Dahlia to be an industrial spy. She's being sent to serve as a Temp in the offices of a game development company -- they're best known for a really simple game, the kind you play in line at the DMV or something, it's relaxing. Still, it's a gaming company and a pretty successful one at that -- it's the kind of place Dahlia should work (if she wasn't becoming a detective). There's another company about to buy them out, but they need some more information -- there are rumors of problems in the office, are they true? Could they look at the existing code for the new version so someone can see why it's delayed?
Dahlia jumps at the assignment -- which is good, because otherwise the novel would be a very short, and pretty dull, story. She shows up for her first day to find, well, chaos? Chaos seems to be an understatement. She starts to acclimate pretty quickly and is behaving more professionally than just about anyone in the office. If Dahilia is the standard of professional behavior, that tells you everything you need to know about the rest. Oh, and then Dahlia finds a dead body. Now in addition to her Industrial Espionage work, there's maybe a murder for her to look into in her spare time.
The problems she faces staying staying incognito: The detective in charge of investigating the murder/suspicious death knows about her from Shuler. There's a reporter sniffing around -- and scheduled to tour the company -- who's written about her exploits. Her friends can't stop saying things to her coworkers about her being a detective. And, well, she's just not that subtle of an investigator -- she largely pulls it off, but that's primarily due to the company being in turmoil and no one having a lot of attention to devote to the question "why is our temp asking all these questions?"
Part of the fun of these books has been watching Dahlia flail around, unsure what to do next. There's less of that here -- she's learning. I'm not suggesting that she's transformed herself into Kinsey Millhone or Joan Watson, but there's something about her that's less flailing. Maybe because she has some pretty clear objectives this time out. I liked that hint of growing skills. Not bad for someone with a recent concussion.
Now, to the rest of the cast: the people in the office, by and large, feel like characters from other series. Gamers, SF geeks, cosplayers . . . those seem like people Dahlia interacts with. Responsible adults with steady jobs? Nope -- which serves the plot. There's a knitting circle that feels like what Dahlia's crowd will become in 30 years, and her interacting with them feels a bit more fitting.
The book is just as amusing as its predecessors, I literally laughed out loud a few times -- not at big comic moments, but at a line of dialogue or a quip Dahlia makes. The big comic moments worked for me, but not as effectively. As always, half the fun is from the very odd circumstances that Dahlia finds herself, but the other half of the fun is the way Dahlia narrates things, the metaphors, pop culture references, etc. Yeah, I thought the Mad Men references were a little too close to each other -- but I appreciated both of them so much, I didn't care (also, pairing Joan Holloway with Della Street? Perfect). One of the things that the writers behind MST3K always said that when they go for super-specific references that are obscure, they know that not all viewers will get the joke, but those that do will love it. There's a half-chapter in this book (and a couple of call-backs to it later) that I could swear was written just for me. And, yes, I loved it (I didn't give the book a bonus 1/2 star because of it, but I thought about it).
There's some maturing -- at least indicators that maturing and responsibility are on the horizon for ol' Dahlia. It reminded me of Lutz' The Last Word in that respect, but I had a lot more fun with this The Astonishing Mistakes than I did with Izzy Spellman's swan song (not that this is necessarily the end of Dahlia's adventures, though it's always seemed to be marketed as a trilogy). It's good to see that trajectory with Dahlia (and, honestly, her roommate).
Other than that, there's not much to differentiate this from the other two books in the series (as far as the writing goes, not the stories): the writing itself is fun, as is the story, a good mix of serious subject matter and comedic moments (none that detract from the tragedy of murder or anything). There's some good character moments and a decent mystery, too. If you haven't read any of Dahlia Moss' adventures, you should grab one and dive in -- this one will work just as well as the first or second. In the end, you'll want to read all three.
I am very sad to say that this has been my least favorite book in the series. Any references to the geeky computer game world that made the previous Dahlia books so enjoyable were peripheral in this book. Instead, it seemed like a Keystone Cop version of a cliche self-destructing tech start-up company with a murder thrown in for good measure. Whereas the previous two books in the series were heavy on the geek and less on the madcap adventures, this was completely the opposite: not enough geek to balance out the weird things going on around Dahlia. Hopefully the next book in the series returns to the geeky Dahlia we all know and love.
This series always has the potential to go over the zany edge but Wirestone pulls Dahlia back at the best moment to keep things real. I didn't like the first book, which felt too frenetic for me, but this time around I found it entertaining, There's a lot going on at the new company that's hired Dahlia. The comparisons to Veronica Mars elude me so I can't comment on that (and I suspect that generates a fair amount of comment). I did like the contemporary references. It's a cozy for a different set of readers. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC.