This book was pretty fun! I love a mystery mixed up with romance, especially when there's queerness and questions of race and gender and power in it! Was this super high quality or innovative fiction? It was not! But it was quick and enjoyable and interesting!

I've never done the online dating thing, but my friends that have confirm that people are not completely honest in their biographies or messages. I know, shocker. And I've seen enough algorhythms (Amazon, Netflix, etc.) to know that they don't always get things right. Makes sense, though, because we're all unique and simply because I share two or three likes with someone doesn't mean that I'll share more than that. Anyway... there is a company, Veracity, that can be discretely hired to check someone's profile: was he really on vacation with college friends, or is there another woman? did she really attend that prestigious university when she says, or has she lowered her age a little (or a lot)? Claudia works for them, tracking and investigating targets. And then a client dies.

The amateur mystery part was far less interesting than the questions around algorithmic accuracy and what people do (or don't) say about their lives. What if Veracity were a real company? What if other companies started to use their methods to check that I really meant to stream that movie, or if someone was using my password? Or more? Too much time spent on the mystery meant lower stars from me. YMMV.

eARC provided by publisher via Netgalley.

I had high hopes when I started reading this - excited to have a Chinese American protagonist for a mystery series. Unfortunately while the writing was okay the story itself dragged and was no particularly compelling at all.

I thoroughly enjoyed this novel and hope Jane Pek has a long and prolific career ahead of her. Claudia Lin, a quirky, intentionally underachieving woman is hired by a somewhat mysterious company to help online daters investigate their potential partners. Things go awry when a client ends up dead of an apparent suicide, and Claudia can't let go of the idea that something is amiss. With frequent references to the fictional Inspector Yuan, Claudia's favorite literary sleuth, a cast of slightly outrageous yet believable characters, and a thoroughly likable and slightly flawed heroine, the story unfolds as a modern high tech twist on the classic whodunit. A touch of romance makes me hope we haven't seen the end of Claudia.

Claudia Lin is the youngest child in a Chinese-American family who lives in NYC. The story is really a combination of a murder mystery and a coming-of-age, family novel. Claudia becomes a "verifier" working for a company known as Veracity, which is a very private company that uses technology to allow those who use dating websites to investigate people they have met through these sites. Claudia sees this job very much as an opportunity to practice what her favorite novel detective performs in the books she loves. Interestingly enough, she actually does get to act in a detective when one of the Veracity clients does not arrive for a scheduled appointment and is later found dead. As Claudia investigates, we also learn more about her life inside and outside her family.
I really, really thought I would love this book. Although I usually love books with intriguing vocabular and lots of character development, I found myself getting irritated at having to look up so many words (I have a doctorate degree, so I'm no dummy) and learning what seemed like SOOOO much about every single character, even the minor mentions. It was an interesting read, but something just was lacking in it for me.
Thank you Vintage and NetGalley for the eARC of this book.

Start with a premise that an English major gets hired by an online dating service that verifies for clients that the matches are telling the truth during their interactions because of the main character’s ability on an online murder mystery game. Throw in sibling and family dynamics, plus Claudia’s reliance on one of her favorite Chinese mystery series, and you have a fun romp through an interesting moral dilemma (who tells the truth all of the time?)—oh, except for that one pesky unexplained death along the way. Amusing, touching and raises some very interesting questions about dating through the digital age.

A thank you to Netgalley for sharing the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

What I liked: the snappy writing it's great and meant that the book moved at an much appreciated fast clip; the main character - she's fun and just plain likeable; the cultural component, the unique storyline, and the audio narration. What I didn't like so much: too much techie and the online dating thing. Different, yes, but neither is of much interest to me. Would've liked it more if it had been a straight mystery - maybe a little less focus on technology with the character an online P.I...Will read more by the author though for the writing alone.

Great characters and good story. Looking forward to more. Thanks to Netgalley for the opportunity to read this book

This book was a pleasant surprise: quick-witted, tinged with wry humor at just the right times, limned with familial drama, and underpinned by the moral dilemmas surrounding consumer privacy rights, data mining, machine learning, AI, and algorithms and how they are increasingly playing a part in how humans around the world make their day-to-day choices and what all of that could mean for our futures.

For all its levity, this is a book that does take on some heavy moral and social issues, but it does so deftly, never letting the issue settle in long enough to bring the reader down. Pek lets it linger long enough on the page to make just a jab of impact before drawing us away from the inevitable ennui or melancholy that could easily settle in with overwrought discussion arising from such an overwhelming topic. It’s a masterful bit of storytelling: to parry and thrust with the heavy and the light so the reader can both absorb the implications of the narrative and have time to recover from it in order to enjoy the story as well.

Claudia is a terrific character, and her brief interactions with her family members only serve to highlight certain bits of the main plot, which is a great move on Pek’s part. It would’ve been easy to let the family distract us or to use their drama to create sympathy for Claudia. But Pek just uses their stories to subtly illuminate aspects of the story already occurring. It’s a nice narrative touch.

I didn’t think the book was perfect, but it was very enjoyable, and I highly recommend it.

Thanks go to NetGalley, Knopf Doubleday, and Vintage Books for early access to this title in exchange for a fair and honest review!

Not really into this one. However, I thought the story was an interesting idea.

Thank you Netgalley and publishers for the eARC.

This was a DNF for me unfortunately. The writing style was too sparse and I couldn’t connect to the main character. I really like the idea behind this book but it just wasn’t for me! I got about 100 pages in and the plot was really dragging for me.

If only Claudia could have protected hearts from the Tinder Swindler. Clients looking for romance through dating apps hire Claudia to verifying that their matches aren’t lying. She eagerly follows the example of her literary detective heroes when one client goes missing, ignoring her company’s advice to drop the issue. At the same time, she’s hiding her new career from her high achieving family, including her mother who doesn’t understand why Claudia is uninterested in any of the nice boys she suggests. The dysfunctional sibling dynamics, Claudia’s realistic amateur detective antics, and the technology conspiracy combine for a nuanced mystery novel. Fingers crossed for a sequel!

Claudia Lin has always loved mystery novels and she’s great at keeping secrets — like hiding the fact that she’s a lesbian from her family. So when she’s offered a job at an online dating company that promises to investigate if clients’ potential partners are telling the truth, Claudia is certain she’s found her dream job. But then a client dies under mysterious circumstances. Claudia secretly looks into the death and finds her company may be hiding some dark secrets themselves.

This is 100% a book lover's mystery! Literature play a huge role, from finding clues to Claudia's obsession with mysteries. But beyond the mystery, THE VERIFIERS is also rich in complex characters, ethical questions about big tech, nuanced family relationships, and so much more. This is a wonderfully layered read that still has plenty of adventure and opportunities to guess whodunit!

This novel tells the story of Claudia, or as her siblings call her, "Claw," a young Chinese-American woman who gets a job working for a company with a unique mission. People who are doing online dating hire the company to investigate their dates, to see if they're telling the truth about themselves. But then one of the company's clients gets murdered, and Claudia feels compelled to catch the killer herself. In the process, she - and we - learn a lot about the online dating business. She's a fun main character and the novel is written with a lot of flair. I really enjoyed it.

Claudia Lin is a real life detective—well, sort of. She started a job working for Veracity, a referrals-only online dating investigating agency that verifies their clients’ online dates to see that they really are who they say they are. When one of Veracity’s clients disappears, she can’t help but try to solve a real mystery.

I loved this modern take on a locked room mystery with call backs to Agatha Christie and other classic mystery novels. Online dating also fascinates me since it’s something I never experienced. Although Claudia loves her job, she struggles with the pressure of her family’s expectations of working at a respectable job and finding a nice Chinese boyfriend. The story was felt modern yet classic. It’s a great commentary on how technology is used in today’s world, and also examines complex family relationships in a seamless way. I’m looking forward to more novels by Jane Pek!

Thanks @netgalley and @vintageanchorbooks for the ARC. All opinions are my own.

Not completely smitten with this one but the premise was intriguing. I think the text went a little too into the weeds building out the conflicts presented by the matchmaking companies. But even with all that, the conflict/mystery wasn’t at all big enough to pull the story through for me. I enjoyed Claudia’s quirkiness and felt like her character stood out for me in the book. I liked how her brain works but could have done with less Inspector Yuan references. I loved the inclusion of the family dynamics and Claudia’s increased awareness of her family’s brokenness and love for each other — I think this part was very well-written and developed.

Review: This was a bit tricky to rate, because the narration and all the scenes where Claudia, our narrator, is interacting with family or friends or co-workers or really whomever are absolutely 5-star-worthy. Claudia's inner voice is possibly one of the best I've ever come across; it reminds me of Rosa Diaz crossed with Nancy Drew (or one of Nancy's gayer friends). It's snarky yet enthusiastic, with what feels like a very appropriate vocabulary for a character who makes as many references to classic literature as Claudia does. And the dialogue throughout the book is golden, it hits just the right notes of quirky and humorous without tipping over into the unbelievable. I also really liked the dynamics between Claudia and her family and how their complexity was explored.

Where it gets a bit messy, though, is the mystery plot. It really delves deep into the inner workings of the matching industry, and Claudia's inner voice almost disappears completely when she really gets going on the topic. The mystery itself is also not particularly compelling after about the 50% mark, and I felt almost nothing at its resolution.

I will still read the next book to see if Claudia and Becks get together though.

The Verifiers by Jane Pek is a good mystery in which the suicide was set up so well, only one person, our "heroine" suspected murder. The really frightening part was the company she worked for, a company that did background checks on potential dates one had made via a dating site on the Internet. The services could, and often did, include following the subject of the inquiry. Information that was supposed to be private was not. The algorithms the dating services used were not innocent, instead were manipulative. Just as Google and Facebook use their sites to gather information on their users. Just as I often don't read books about the government and its agencies because it makes my cynical, so should I not read books like this. I don't use dating sites and now I would not consider it for anyone I care about.

The name of the company was Veracity. It was small. Only three employees. Iris Lettriste came to get background on a man she was sleeping with, that she had met on one such site. She also wanted more information on a man she had chatted with. He was interesting but never wanted to meet. Then he dropped off the radar for a few weeks, then reappeared. She wanted to know why. Veracity followed up. What they found, she didn't like. Claudia is an interesting character. First generation Chinese, she is very hooked in with her family, a mother, a brother, and a sister. She bikes all over New York. She is gay and lives with a gay male friend, which upsets her mother, who purposely misinterprets the relationship. These folks all add to the complication that is Claudia's life. The mystery is excellent, and ramps up my cynicism when Claudia solves it. This is a book with a very different premise and good at it.

I was invited to read a free e-ARC of The Verifiers by Vintage Books, through Netgalley. All thoughts and opinions are my own. #netgalley #vintagebooks #janepek #theverifiers

Fun and sparkling read!

Edgy contemporary mystery that took me into the bewildering world of match making apps, compatibility algorithms, and the idea of how much information is actually out there about us. As a result of the latter I felt like closing every social media app I use, going off grid and heading for the hills.
It seems the problem with the dating apps is that all participants either stretch the truth or downright lie. That means matchings are skewed. Let me not get into the training of the bots associated with the process. Veracity is a company that will triage your date and tell you what’s what—generally after you’ve been taken for a ride. Claudia Lin can’t believe she’s landed a job with this techno edgy company. BTW her family thinks she’s still working at a financial institution. I love Claudia’s description to her friends about what Veracity does, “ “It’s really a big Sorting Hat,” I say, “that matches people up based on which Hogwarts house they belong to.” That’s in fact the premise of two boutique matchmakers I’ve come across.”
Love that! Harry Potter references sizing up the world of internet dating. Ha!
Enter client Iris Lettriste who wants a potential date checked. There’s some implausibilities and she wants to know if her match is the real deal or a jerk. Pre-verifying a date is rather unusual. But still the firm takes her on as a client. When Iris is found dead things become even more complicated, especially for Claudia.
Channeling Inspector Yuan, her fictional Chinese murder hero, Claudia decides to power on to discover all that she can. Well she was doing that prior to the demise of Iris anyway. Veracity is not a detective agency. Claudia has her doubts as she gets caught up in the moment, her Yuan personae taking charge constantly.
Witty and entertaining, I was grabbed by the hilarity of Claudia and her continual inner observations, her relationship with her family, and her almost slapstick detecting abilities.

Thank you to Penguin Random House for their invitation to look at this ARC via NetGalley
Please note: Quotes taken from an advanced reading copy maybe subject to change
(Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.)

The description hooked me. This just was not the book for me. After reading through fifty pages, I apologize, but I just could not get into this.