Lutz has proven that she is much more than the Spellmans (one of my much beloved series). An examination of how well we know the people we love and what they are capable of. Recommended for book groups who like a mystery with some bite and complexity.

From the publisher: Everyone has the same questions about best friends Owen and Luna: What binds them together so tightly? Why weren’t they ever a couple? And why do people around them keep turning up dead? The Accomplice examines the bonds of shared history, what it costs to break them, and what happens when you start wondering if you ever truly knew the only person who truly knows you.

This book has a hook. I still can’t identify what it is, exactly, but once I started reading I wasn’t going to stop. Luna and Owen have a frankly strange relationship. They are very good friends who make Luna’s husband say that he and Owen’s wife Irene “had a similar sense of being the third wheel in our own marriages.” (p. 157 of the Advance Reader Copy)

Luna and Own have both been on the periphery of more deaths than is normal for a person. How many times is someone questioned by the police over the course of their life? For most people, the answer is zero. Not Luna and Owen. Even the cops think their relationship is not right.

So many secrets. And yet the author makes it believable that the secrets have been kept. I felt like Luna and Owen were two real people – not terribly likable, but well drawn. The plot isn’t spooky or tense, it’s just – interesting. Like listening to great gossip about someone you didn’t much care for in school. The pacing is superb. The narrative flips back and forth in time, and both timelines fascinated me equally.

There are a couple of mysteries, and I guessed about half of one and was completely caught off guard by the other. I congratulate any author who can put all the clues in place and still take me by surprise. I’ve read a lot of psychological thrillers in 2020 and 2021. I’ve enjoyed settling into someone’s fictional problems and forgetting about the real world’s problems for a while. The Accomplice is one of the best I’ve read in the last two years.

I read an advance reader copy of The Accomplice from Netgalley. It will be published in late January 2022 and will be available in print and as an ebook at the Galesburg Public Library. If you want to try out the author before then, the library owns her Spellman Files series and her other novels.

This book was less of a mystery than an exploration of a codependent (toxic?) friendship between two inherently unlikeable people. Owen and Luna have been platonic (REALLY!) BFFs since they met in college, but people keep dying around them. First, Owen's college girlfriend dies mysteriously, and then years later his wife is brutally murdered, so he looks shady AF. Luna sticks with him through it all because that's what BFFs do, right?

I can't say I loved this book, but I enjoyed reading it, and will always love Lisa Lutz's writing style - smart and snarky and funny and insightful. Also: The ferret house was hilarious.

A fast-paced mystery that lives among and follows a group of friends (my favorite kind!). Written in Lisa Lutz's signature style, this is a must-read for fans of her work.

Owen and Luna have been friends since college. Luna has always been secretive, but when she finds the body of her friend and Owen’s wife shot dead while on a jog through the cemetery, the cops of course turn to the spouse first.

The narrative goes back and forth from their college years, where tragedy struck an acquaintance of theirs, to 2019 when Owen’s wife’s murder is being investigated. This is a fun mystery because even though Owen and Luna aren’t perfect, you also don’t want them to be murderers, and it’s unclear until the end who the bad guy(s) are.

Thanks to NetGalley for the opportunity to review this novel, which RELEASES JANUARY 25, 2022.

When Owen and Luna meet in college they quickly become best friends and inseparable. Then a death occurs and rocks their inner circle. Years later Owen’s wife is murdered and they find themselves involved in another mystery.

This was a slow burn with a pretty deep examination into a unique friendship. It’s not often that we read about a coed friendship that is purely platonic, but that’s the entire background of the story. The dual time lines was easy to follow despite going back and forth. The mystery and history both unraveled slowly, but neatly.

“Sometimes when you talked to someone who was truly sick, some of that sickness could stick to you, like drifting ash after a fire.”

The Accomplice comes out 1/25.

Thank you to the NetGalley and the publisher for a copy of this book. Unfortunately I could not finish the book as I could not connect with any of the characters.

I found this an interesting read that I should suggest for our book club. It kept me involved and my mind working throughout. Neither of the characters are likeable but if that is only what you want, you should be reading romance. This unlikeability keeps you from forming a team Luna or team Owen at some point during the book. As usual with this author there are some twists as not everything is as it seems. There is a tiny bit of glimmer of the humor of her previous books but the tight writing is still there.

I loved these characters, especially Owen! This was such a fun read with an amazing storyline and great plot! I definitely would read more from this author.

"The Accomplice" focuses on a deep and abiding friendship between Owen and Luna, who meet in college. It is the story of more than one death that they have singly and together experienced. And booze everywhere, in family homes, on their college campus, at the edge of a cliff. The story takes place in two timeframes, the early 2000s, when the bloom comes off Owen while they are still college students and fifteen years later when tragedy strikes again. It is a story of trust, suspicion, real betrayal, the pasts that haunt us, figuring out how to be one's authentic self and several mysteries: These mysteries include the not so likable elderly artist who could have been self-supporting but isn't; one dead mother; one dead father; one old death that led to guilt; one very new death that leads to confusion; a very unlikeable guy in prison; a couple of affairs; too much gossip; a neighbor who reminds one of Gladys Kravitz; and a brother and his dog. The cops are delightfully appealing characters as to every one of the deaths. Lutz is an adept sketch artist of character and one's imagination more than takes care of the stories she doesn't explicitly tell.I'd love to think I was one of the first to discover Lisa Lutz because when I found her Spellman series, I felt I alone knew about these books. I was so entertained and amused I never wanted them to end. "Heads You Lose" equally appealed to me. (It was not a mystery.) But, I took awhile to fully appreciate her later work. Oh, I liked the post-Spellman books. But I did not love them. I had type cast the author. Still, I bought each new book in hardcover the minute they came out, so my deep respect for the author stayed intact. My NetGalley ARC of "The Accomplice" started with a letter from a vice-president of Ballatine Books. She noted that "The Accomplice" refers back to a prior stand alone book of Lutz's, "The Passenger." Hmmm. "What was that one about?" I went to Goodreads and Amazon and Lutz's webpage. It was published in 2016. I devour books and it is hard to remember them all, but I recreated which Lutz this was and read good and bad reviews. Doing this changed how I read "The Accomplice". I say this for you who are disappointed that she did not continue the Spellman series or found her later books sparsely written, too shallow, lacking in clues, and rushed at the end. Go back and reread those books! I'm heading back to reread her work from the Spellmans onward. Because Lutz is an original writer and it is all there. And the writing is really sophisticated. It can be easy to write too much. Lutz's style is to write just enough. The rhythm is perfect. The humor less out there but woven throughout. Many reviewers note how quotable her books are. I just paid attention differently and it it true. She captures humanity in one line after another. Genius!

I received an ARC of this novel from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Wow! I am not sure how to review this novel. It has great characters and an excellent story line. The complexities of the situations and the relationship of the two main characters is fascinating. I reached several conclusions only to be disproven in later chapters.

This is a great book and would make a terrific book club choice.

Owen and Luna have a close friendship and the reader follows their story in two time frames, their present lives as adults and their previous lives as college students. In both time frames, someone from their life is found dead. An added element is Luna’s past, which she has tried to hide from but continues to fall under it’s shadow.

Lisa Lutz’s previous book, The Passenger, was one of my favorites the year I read it so I was very exciting to read this new one. While the story was very engaging, the ending wasn’t a good payoff, in my opinion. The culmination of both sides of the story seemed somewhat anti-climatic. That being said, I will still continue to look forward to her books.

Two platonic friends have had an intense bond of friendship since meeting in college. When the wife of one is brutally murdered years later, it causes both of them to investigate, and to come to terms with some of the questionable things in their respective pasts. An engaging, edge of your seat thriller/mystery that is filled with fascinating characters. I look forward to recommending this title.

I made it through about three quarters of this, but I just lost interest. I didn't have any interest in finishing, so I didn't.

I have zero words for what i felt while reading this book. I've been a huge fan of Lisa Lutz's previous work but this one is hands down one of her best books to date. Her dialogue is always on point but this story about two best friends is one book I could not put down. I don't even want to give away any details about the book. Let's just say that you will not want to stop reading it and once it's over, you'll wish it was even longer. One of the best books I've read in a very very long time.

You gotta stop watering dead plants.......

Some relationships are just not meant to be. Friendships are like that, too. We put so much into them, and yet, we don't always get back the same return.

Owen Mann and Luna Grey met under some unexpected circumstances. Both college students, they were hunkering down in the library. Owen, handsome and a smooth talker, tried to engage Luna. She wasn't buyin' what he was sellin'. But all of a sudden, Luna collapses to the floor in an epileptic seizure. Owen never left her side......ever.

A solid friendship was born. Lisa Lutz will flip back and forth from those past college days to the present in alternating chapters. Prepare yourself to be bathed in alcohol throughout. These characters can't function without a secretly hidden bottle stashed somewhere on the premises. (You'll even feel the need for the hair-of-the-dog after many pages.) But then, what transpires throughout these pages needs a bit of liquid bravado.

Owen is married to Irene now. He teaches Art at a local college. Irene is the opposite of Luna and wears workout clothes straight out of The Sopranos. Luna is married to a highly successful surgeon named Sam. They still maintain friendships from college. A bevy of very unusual people. But Owen's dysfunctional family seeps into this circus as well. Caution: They don't play well with others.

And here it comes. Luna texts Irene to meet with her for a run near their homes. Owen finds that Irene didn't come home the night before. They have a weirdly open marriage. But where is the missing Irene? Oh, we'll find her alright. Propped up against a headstone in the cemetery along the running trail. Luna stops dead in her tracks. Only it's Irene who's dead. Shot. But why and by whom?

Lisa Lutz will take us through some tight fitting passageways throughout this one. We'll be switching back and forth on whom we will hang the "Guilty" tag on. None of these individuals are likeable to begin with. That's her intention. Lutz likes to manipulate emotions as she did in The Passenger. We're glued in savoring the thought that someone is going to be served with a heavy box lunch here. Whose name is on the tag? And there's an incident from those rah rah college days, too.

I received a copy of The Accomplice through NetGalley for an honest review. My thanks to Random House (Ballantine Books) and to Lisa Lutz for the opportunity.

Wow! Action packed book from beginning to end! I’ve read this author before and she certainly did not disappoint!

The timeline moved between decades but was clearly defined. I enjoyed trying to guess the outcome - it was such a carefully crafted plot with several great twists throughout the story.

Many thanks to NetGalley and publishers for the advanced reader’s copy in exchange for my honest review. I highly recommend!!

4.5 stars, rounded up
Lisa Lutz has always been able to create quirky, interesting characters. And Luna and Owen are no exceptions. The Accomplice tells the story of their strange friendship, moving back and forth between their college days and 2019, when Owen’s wife turns up murdered. Both of them hold secrets which they don’t share with the other. I loved that the two main characters were always best friends and never romantic partners.
There’s a lovely suspense to this novel. Not just who killed Irene, but why are Owen and Luna both so secretive? Not just with each other but also their spouses. These two are so strange that I can’t say I related to either of them, but they definitely intrigued me. Readers hear from a variety of POVs which worked well to advance the story.
I loved that I had no idea how this story would play out. I tore through this, wanting desperately to see how it would wrap up. It touches on some deeper themes than I expected - how much you can know anyone, betrayal, and what we’re willing to do to protect our loved ones.
Others have commented that the ending was a let down. I thought it was spot on perfect.
My thanks to Netgalley and Random House for an advance copy of this book.

This book was better for me than The Passenger. Luna and Owen have such an odd relationship and they are both very dislikeable characters. The story goes back and forth between the past and present, eventually leading to some interesting revelations. Unfortunately, I don't really like the author's writing style which has the character perspective/thoughts jumping around quickly and frequently. It can be confusing and the story doesn't flow as well as it could. It definitely a book more focused on the crazy family/relationship dynamic than mystery or suspense.

This was a great book! It’s the story of a deep friendship between Luna and Owen and the various deaths that occur in their lives. I felt the it was a strong story with lots of twists that kept me interested. I also felt that the banter between characters was believable, which doesn’t happen often in books! This was a fun read!