I found this hard to read..I more or less was skimming the words to find the story and didn’t really care for the meandering.

added Call Me When You're Dead to my shelves on a whim mainly because I was getting huge Finlay Donovan vibes and I love that series. The blurb sounded like a lot of fun, and I've been looking forward to read it... Sadly, I ended up agreeing with the low ratings for this book, and I had to resort to making the difficult decision to DNF it. I'll try to explain briefly why this story didn't work for me.

Like I said, the blurb sounded like a lot of fun and I was looking forward to this dark comedy, but the actual story fell rather flat for me. There was no real plot to speak of (or at least in the part I read), and it was more the random ramblings of the characters rather than something really cohesive. True, we get the mysterious request of Sasha for Eleanor to 'get him' if something happens to her, but it's all rather vague and the focus seems on something else. To make things worse, the attempt at humor was a total fail for me, and there wasn't even the tiniest chuckle once while I tried to read this story. It mostly felt like slow torture instead...

Another thing that bothered me considerably was the awkward third person POV; I can enjoy stories with this POV if they are done right, but something just felt off here and it only alienated me from the characters even more. This is the worst possible result, because the characters are bland and rather horrible in the first place, and I didn't particularly want to spend any time with them. I also clashed considerably with the writing style itself... There was just something about the structure and word choice that felt rather awkward and forced.

As you might have guessed, sadly Call Me When You're Dead and me most definitely didn't get along, and I really saw no other way out than DNFing this. True, things might have improved later on, but judging the reviews I don't think I missed out on too much.

Um dos meus critérios para o livro ser recomendável ou não é a rapidez com que eu leio os primeiros 20%. Infelizmente, Call Me When You’re Dead é um não recomendável e uns dos poucos DNF. A proposta do livro é incrível, mas os personagens que conheci na narrativa não são cativantes a ponto de me prender e me perguntar porquê continuar a leitura.

Love the type but the storyline was so hard to get into. The pace of the book was flat and slow. The writing was good and the plot was worth the read but it took me a long time to really understand the meaning of what the other was trying to say about forgiveness. I think it would have been better with a few shocking moments to really help the storyline along. It was predictable.

This wasn't for me. The pace was a bit slow and i couldn't connect with the characters. thank you netgalley & the publisher for the arc.

I almost DNF the book, because the pacing of the storyline was too slow. Although my reading experience was unpleasant, I still chose to stick myself with the book until the end. It was told from the POV of a third person narrative. It was interesting and caught my interest. Until I reached 20% of it, I was still trying to understand the plot. I was curious if Eleanor will be able to complete her task. When I reached the end, it had made me think about what truly matters. Forgiveness means letting go of our grudges toward those who caused us pain, and compassionately release the desire to punish them. Despite this, the author still deserve kudos, you got me hooked on that part.

Special thanks to @netgalley and the publisher, She Writes Press, for granting my request to receive an e-ARC in exchange for an unbiased review. Thank you for making this available.

I wanted to read this book because I'm looking for a good "cozy mystery" that is similar to "Finlay Donavon is Killing It". I don't think this was like that at all. I couldn't connect to the characters and the writing and the dialogue was all over the place and didn't make any sense. I couldn't even bring myself to care about the mystery.

Thank you to She Writes Press for sending me an early copy via NetGalley to review.

I couldn’t finish this book. Around 20% in I realised this book wasn’t really for me- the characters were bland, there didn’t really seem to be a plot line and there didn’t really seem to be much direction overall. I tried to get further into it, hoping it would improve but it stayed the same. Others might enjoy this but it simply wasn’t for me.

I’m really sorry to say, but this just didn’t do it for me. I was really looking forward to it after reading that synopsis but somehow, it just missed the mark. After many times of trying I had to DNF it.
Thank you for the chance to read it.

Reviewed for NetGalley:

I did not get into this page from the very first page. I tried and tried to continue, but I didn't get much further, unfortunately.

Not a fan of the third person narrative descriptors, just didn't work for me.

Nora Ephron meets John Kennedy Toole vibes. It’s not a good mix. I assume this is set in present day, but something about the writing and dialogue had me picturing big hair and shoulder pads. This world circles around NYC Ad executives, stretch limos and steak dinners. The descriptions of people also felt dated. There is a receptionist in the beginning who is described as “young black woman”, then much later someone is described as “the Argentine seducer”. Nobody else’s race is mentioned which made the point of calling this out for just two background characters sit weird.

Not much to say for this cast of fast talking, self destructive characters with zero build. Most of the dialogue and occurrences do not move the plot forward. When we were finally getting someone I looked at my Kindle progress and I was 93% in. Woof. A shame since the plot wasn’t bad.

Came for the title, left with nothing good.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

A great read! It was a bit of a slow build but once it got going it was really enjoyable and it was a fun mystery to solve. I would definitely recommend to others!

This ARC was provided to me via Kindle, from She Writes Press and #NetGalley. Thank you for the opportunity to preview and review. Opinions expressed are completely my own.

Slow build to an enjoyable mystery that was fun to unwind.

3.5 stars!

I adored the cover so I thought it'd be paced hard and fast like that.

It was not. Which was a tad disappointing.

But honestly saying, the plot was SOLID, I wish it was a bit more detailed and not very "shady shady" in the start.

And since it had a SLOW buildup, it was easy to want to drop it at times but I persevered!!

And I enjoyed the ending. I kinda wish that Eleanor's thoughts were described a bit more clearly with preferably shorter sentences because I personally felt that she was a bit all over the place at times.

But other than all that, it was REALLY enjoyable!