Thank you Poisoned Pen Press and Net Galley for this e-arc in exchange for an honest review.

This was not what I was expecting it to be when I started it, I really liked what it ended up being

Theo is the FMC- she drops out of law school to go live with her brother and pursue her dream of becoming a writer. While pursuing her dream she meets another author that through association with him she ends up involved in things that could get her and everyone around her killed.

We also get the POVs of Theo's older and very protective brother, as well as the POV of Mac the friendly "private eye" who helps them along the way.

Things I like about thus book:
1. I couldn't call the ending.
2. The characters had a lot of dept and though out backgrounds
3. clues to what was happening everywhere
4. Romance plot was side plot to the mystery/thriller plot.

Reading the cover synopsis could easily confuse the unadventurist reader. BUT.....taking a chance, the story line is a twisted look at the murder mystery world. Before, during and after the fact. It's a treat to find a new to me author that can hold my attention for the entire book. There are several hhhmmmm chapters where your ability to solve the crime will be seriously tested, but the end is worth it.

Thank you so much to Poisoned Pen Press for this ebook in exchange for a free review. This had such an interesting plot and characters, once I got started I couldn’t put it down! Highly recommend checking this one out!

Thank you to Netgalley & the publisher for the ARC which I was approved for only 5 days before the book was hitting shelves. Writers as main characters have become very popular. As an aspiring author, I tend to root for the writers. I have felt very strongly about books about writers such as A LIKELY STORY. I Am also critical of them and have been disappointed with several including THE WRITERS RETREAT. Theo seems very innocent and naive, especially since she's well-traveled. How convenient that her brother Gus is an attorney. I liked Dan's character and was enjoying the book until he died. I wasn't a fan of the Caleb/Primus sections without giving any spoilers. I DNFed it halfway through when it became too coincidental.

The Mystery Writer by Sulari Gentill is about Theodosia Benton who decides not to continue law school in Australia and unexpectedly arrives on the doorstep of her brother in Lawrence, Kansas. Once there she decides to start working as a writer. In doing so, she befriends a well-known author who is suspiciously murdered. Unfortunately, Theo and her brother are prime suspects. What ensues is a fast paced, wild ride to discover the truth.

This is the first Sulari Gentill book I’ve read and I enjoyed it. It was fast paced and kept me guessing until the end. Definitely an author I will continue to read

Theodosia Benton abandons law school in Australia to move to Lawrence, Kansas with her older brother and work towards her goal of becoming a writer. She starts going to a cafe to write and ends up meeting an older, highly successful writer, Dan, who quickly becomes her friend, mentor, and eventually, more. Things seem to be going great for Theo until the day she walks into Dan's house to find him brutally murdered and she instantly becomes the police's main and only suspect. It sets off a string of events that will forever change the Benton sibling's lives and uncover a dangerous literary world no one could have imagined.
I am in awe of the creativity and wickedness on display in this book. Gentill has always been an author that can keep you guessing, but this book is perfection. Even though there are breadcrumbs that make you guess at the ultimate ending, there is nothing that can prepare you for what actually happens. It's full of surprises and unexpected turns that ramp up the excitement from one chapter to the next. And the fact that it all comes with a nice serving of positive connections and feelings to keep it from getting as dark as it could have been, is the cherry on top.
I will say it's a little depressing that one of the main points of the plot is extra scary because it's incredibly believable that people could be manipulated like that. It sounds like something that is actually happening and that little bit of extra realism makes the plot hit even harder. It's excellently executed.

Delighted thanks to NetGalley and Poisoned Pen Press for the pulse-pounding read!

A writer pens a novel to solve a crime. Her lover has been murdered, and her brother is a suspect. Introduce a conspiracy theorist, a fancy agent, and this novelist finds herself in the throws of a giant game of who "whodunit." Don't expect gasp outloud twisty moments, instead you find a slow-burn mystery.

Its multi-plot story was a bit confusing, especially the jump in times.

Thank you, Poisoned Pen Press.

The Mystery Writer drew me in quickly. Theo's character challenged the possibility and the idea of abandoning the expectations imposed on society to pursue a bigger dream of being a published author. The potential of partnering with a well-known and very powerful publishing company to be published with her transcript, while also questioning if it was the "right" thing to do as suspicious as it sounded.

Very quick into the story Theo gets involved in a writing group and jumps in heart first with a writer who is older than her. Dan Murdoch a best selling author, who has taken an interest in Theo and her writing. Shortly after their infatuation and exchange with each other Dan is murdered. Forced to mourn and put the pieces together of his death, Theo, Mac, and Gus are in it trying to unravel the pieces. Throw in more and more conspiracy theorists, a large online social-media presence that have a force and add a chaotic reality of how vulnerable we can be. Theo continues to stumble upon body and murder after murder, fearing that she is next. Forced to think about her actions of what her "publishing dream" was she commits herself to find the source and still stay safe.

The timeline and plot unfolding made me guess who was the person/people behind the murders, what their reasoning was, and what thread was woven throughout as a bigger message. All in all, the influence of fictional narratives over people can cause serious control. Selling people with ideas of distrust of the education system, media, food, or people has an influence and actually relevant in our day to day lives.

The Mystery Writer causes us to question what to believe and who to believe in society as a whole. Thank you to Poisoned Pen Press, Sulari Gentill, and Netgalley for the opportunity to read this thrilling and quick paced ARC.

Unfortunately, this book was not for me. I enjoyed the author’s writing style, she’s a very talented writer. The story had some twists that left me unsure of what would come next. The main characters were well developed and had clear personality traits. But I disliked the main character, Theo. I found her difficult to connect with and she came off as naive, unintelligent, whiny, and annoying. I similarly didn’t care for the rest of the characters, who felt like caricatures of real people who had been rendered down to their worst traits. The story itself was, for lack of a better word, absolutely ludicrous and strained even a generous imagination. The setting felt like the author was writing about somewhere she had heard of but never been, leaving a disjointed and lacking quality to the descriptions. At the end of the day, I imagine this story captures well what those outside of the US think of Americans, so as someone who is here, the story simply didn’t land with me.

Stars: 3.5

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC

What if those conspiracy theories floating around the internet were actually real? And what if you found yourself caught up in one? Would you be able to find your way out or would you end up joining in? In Gentill’s latest novel, one young writer finds herself embroiled in something quite sinister and she isn’t sure where to turn.

Theo Benton is a young Australian woman who has left law school and finds herself on the doorstep of her older brother’s house in Lawrence, Kansas. She doesn’t want to be a lawyer, instead she wants to write. Gus Benton loves his sister and tells her to stay, write her novel and they will figure it all out. So Theo writes and as she does, she becomes friends with a fellow novelist who acts as her mentor. And then one day he is found dead. And when other people also start dying around Theo, the police begin to suspect she might be the killer. It is up to her, her brother, and their friends to clear her name.

That is about all I can say for the plot without spoiling it, since this is a thriller and you know, I don’t want to completely uncover all the conspiracy bits.

There is some spoiler-y stuff below so if you don’t want too much, quit reading now!

It took me a little bit to get into this book, I wasn’t sure how I felt about Theo, especially because I felt like her stated age in the book (22) didn’t translate well for the story. Or her brother’s either - I felt like they all needed to be a bit older. But once I got over that and got into the heart of it, it didn’t really matter. The pacing in the beginning and middle were good and the story moved along at a good clip but then we had a huge jump and it felt pretty jarring. Gentill spent a lot of time setting up the premise, establishing the relationship between Theo and Gus and going into a fair bit of detail about Theo’s writing process and her novel, all good things and a way to draw the reader in. And then somehow we manage to condense two or three years into a really short section but without really signaling to the reader that is what happened. I think there could have been a way to do this, say divide the book into Part I and Part II, so that you knew that significant time had passed. And I think I wanted that time-lapse discussed in a different way, Gentill peeled back some layers as the last third of the book went on, but I think it would have been ok for the plot to have revealed them soon.

All in all, I would certainly recommend this book. I enjoyed this one as much as I did The Woman In the Library, which I read a few years ago and was set in Boston. And I have to say one thing that I find truly amazing is that, according to the readers' guides in both books, Gentill has not been to Boston or Lawrence. Instead she relies on research and locals to help her create a sense of place. I am not a conspiracy person myself, but I am not sure how she manages to do this so well without being from these places! I mean, her understanding of Boston was amazing. And maybe it was the research, but the the little bon mots she throws out to Kansas and Missouri are great (Thomas Hart Benton, Melissa Etheridge, Bleeding Kansas).

Gentil’s latest novel follows the story of Theo, a young Australian woman who comes to her brother in Kansas, hoping to become a writer. Everything seems to be going smoothly, as she nears completion of her manuscript and befriends a fellow writer, until someone dies and Theo becomes a suspect. The story was propelling, but some of it was a bit underdeveloped and hard to believe.

Theodosia Benton went to school in Australia to become a lawyer. Halfway through she drops out of school and runs to her brother in America. What she really wants to do is become a published author. She has a burning desire to create wonderful stories and get a traditional publishing contract. Her brother, already a prominent attorney and a partner in a Kansas law firm, wants her to have her dreams and agrees to allow her to live with him while she writes her first book. She devotes the next six months to doing just that. She hangs at at the local coffee/bar down the street from their house, meets published author who takes her under his wing. He doesn't talk about his personal life only about the writing and helps her develop her story. When she figures out he is a 'famous' author she asked him to help her get an agent.

Theo is so excited about her writing coming togeher, her budding relationship with a published author and the friends she has made while living with her brother. However, all of that is about the change because in the background there is a web of lies surrounding them and their friends. The spark happens when Theo finds her author friend murdered. The actiion, suspense, and intrigue just keeps going from there.

I thought the action and intrique, twists and turns within the story were excellent. I read the entire book in one night and hope you will purchase a copy and read it as well.

I began reading this book with high expectations. I read Sulari Gentill's previous book, The Woman in the Library, and loved it. In The Mystery Writer, Theodosia “Theo” Benton drops out of law school in Australia and heads to Lawrence, Kansas to fulfill her dream of being a writer. She moves in with her brother, Gus. Theo meets Dan Murdoch a successful writer who agrees to help her. Dan misses an arranged meeting and Theo goes to his house. She finds him stabbed to death. Theo becomes the number suspect in Dan's death. Dan's agent, Veronica, agrees to take Theo as a client and also to find Dan's killer, and the manuscript he was working on, which was stolen.

The author adds to the whodunit with a group of doomsday peppers , who believe in The Shield and someone named Primus, who is their leader. Maybe Dan was Primus? We find out that Gus and Theo's parents were part of peppers group.

All in all, the author does a good job of tying it all together with some twists and turns along the way. I got bored in the middle, but the pace picked up toward the end. It seemed to me that the author was trying to put too much into the plot.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher, Poisoned Pen Press, for an ARC. The review is my own.

This is the second book I've read by this author and they have both kept me quickly turning the pages. Great characters, and a well paced plot, with enough intrigue and unexpected twists that I had to hurry to finish it. I read it in two days. I love the book/writer themes in her novels and found the characters discussions about writing particularly interesting, of course, while they were solving murders. Highly recommended

Thanks to NetGalley and Poisoned Pen Press for an advanced reader copy.

When Theodosia (Theo) Benton abandons her career path as an attorney and shows up on her brothers doorstep with two suitcases and a half finished novel, she expects to face new challenges

Theo never expects to be drawn into a hidden literary world where identity is something that can be lost and remade.

When her mentor is suddenly murdered, Theo does everything she can to draw out the killers and bring justice for her friend.

I quite like the premise for this story but I think it was almost trying to do too much.

There were a lot of subplots involving minor characters which actually ended up being quite important at the end but got lost in everything else.

The timeline was also a bit confusing. Suddenly they’re talking about how it’s been over a year or over three years and there’s no mention of what has occurred durian that time.

What I did like though were the characters. Theo is a great character, and while she does have the need to be rescued from every situation, she does go above and beyond to help her family.

Mac is another great character. I wish that we had more about his upbringing as his family is a riot and I feel like this could have been built on a bit more.

I am putting this at a very solid 3/5. While I loved the idea, the execution for me fell a bit short, but I loved the character building and the way the story ended.

Thank you to NetGalley, Poised Pen Press and the author for the ARC in exchange for an honest review

Theo, a law school dropout and aspiring novelist, strikes up a friendship/mentorship (and eventually a morally questionable “relationship”) with a famous writer… who winds up dead a few days after their tryst. Somehow the murder is connected to a QAnon-like conspiracy, which drags down Theo and everybody around her as it spirals out of control.

I was excited for this book based on the premise - mystery, murder, conspiracies. I have a few qualms with the execution. How is the main character, Theo, SO naive? She misses so many obvious red flags. Several elements of the story were too obvious and took the mystery out of it. If Caleb’s connection to the story and the true nature of the agency were supposed to be twists, they fell pretty flat for me - I was sure of those things early on. At the same time, there were times I was sure I’d missed something because I was getting lost, but going back to reread proved that the issue wasn’t with me.

The conspiracy premise was timely and intriguing to me, and I appreciated Theo’s fear, as an Aussie in the US, of the omnipresence of firearms. However, the writing itself felt stilted and weak. The time jumps were very confusing - after the first ⅔ of the book happen in a matter of days, it felt disjointed to be jumping months and years ahead. The passage of time could have been handled more smoothly.

This was a quick read and I’m glad I got a chance to read it - although there were some frustrations, I still enjoyed it.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the advance copy, in exchange for an honest review.

What did I just read? I jump on books about writers, but I should have explored this one a little more before I requested it. Conspiracy theories play a large role in this book, probably playing a part that I still don't understand. It was a mystery, but the story seems to jump around between characters, and there are some large jumps in time that certainly didn't help the storyline any. Between the conspiracy theories of the government building new people from parts and the big gaps in time, I was just kind of lost.

I did like the three main characters. Theo and her brother Gus are Australians who have become transplants in Lawrence, Kansas. That's strange enough, but it's even stranger that my son has recently been accepted to KU for his doctorate program. (Insert Twilight music here). Max is a guy who works with Gus's law firm as an investigator. He's a good guy, but his whole family is whacky. They are preparing for the end of civilization as we know it, and it seems that each of his brothers believes a different bizarre thing.

The ending seemed rushed and also very strange. Just not the book for me.

Thanks to Sourcebooks, Poisoned Pen Press and NetGalley for the copy. All thoughts are my own.

She wants to pursue a writing career, but finds herself a suspect in a string of murders instead.

Theodosia (Theo) and her brother Gus were raised by free-spirited parents in Tasmania, but a traumatic event led to Gus being sent to the US to live with his far more traditional grandfather while Theo ended up at a boarding school. Years later, both have been left an inheritance by the grandfather stipulating that they will receive the money if and when they complete law school. Gus did just that, and has recently bought into a law practice in Lawrence, Kansas. Theo on the other hand realizes that the law is not for her and has decided to drop out of law school to pursue her dream of writing a novel, landing unannounced on her brother’s doorstep. Gus is happy to support her as she follows her instincts, but what starts out as a rewarding period of writing in a local bar/cafe and finding a community of fellow authors (including the attractive but mysterious Dan, whom she quickly considers a mentor) takes a decidedly bad turn. First, Theo discovers a dead body, and others to whom she has a connection start turning up dead as well. The police have Theo, Gus and Gus’s friend/investigator Mac in their sights as the likeliest suspects, a QAnon-like group of online conspiracy theorists want Theo dead, and that’s just the beginning. Can Theo, Gus and Mac figure out what is going on in Lawrence before their livelihoods and maybe even their lives are forfeit?
An interesting twist on mysteries where the main character finds themselves the main suspect in a killing. Theo is a likable young woman, if a bit naive when it comes to stumbling about crime scenes and talking to the police without first consulting her brother the lawyer. The mystery of what happened when Theo was younger and how Gus factored in to the matter is teased out and eventually becomes a part of the plot. The character I most enjoyed was Mac, the quiet but effective “researcher” who refuses to consider himself a PI and who comes from a notorious (and highly entertaining!) family of doomsday preppers (he is the Marilyn in that particular Munster family, if you will). Throw in the conspiracy theorists who believe that a worldwide plot to reanimate dead bodies is unfolding in their midst and for whom Theo’s mentor Dan may or may not be their “Q”, known here as Primus, as well as a literary agency which catapults unknown authors to the heights of bestsellerdom (but at what cost?), there are plenty of potential villains, red herrings and motives floating around to grab and hold the reader’s attention to the end. As I read The Mystery Writer, it had elements that reminded me in one way or another of books I’d recently read by Alexandra Ivy, Jenny Hollander and Sarah Ochs, so those who have read and enjoyed one of those authors might want to give this one a try, as should aspiring mystery writers and conspiracy theory aficionados. Many thanks to NetGalley and Poisoned Pen Press for a lively and entertaining read.

Having enjoyed Woman in the Library, I’ve been looking forward to finally getting to read this one. One of the things that I enjoyed about Woman in the Library was the story around the story, writers writing about writers. It was this notion that I had in my head from the get-go as I delved into this story with a very similar storyline/plot.

The very first sentence of the book summary is kind of a spoiler, “There's nothing easier to dismiss than a conspiracy theory—until it turns out to be true”. So, from the get-go, I’m thinking, “ok, it’s about a conspiracy theory that’s actually true”. The rest of the book summary basically just introduces the main characters siblings, Theo and Gus (a lawyer) and how the story started, so I’m not going to repeat any of that here. What the book summary doesn’t mention is Gus’s friend and co-worker, Mac, who is an investigator at Gus’s law firm. It also doesn’t mention how this “conspiracy theory” started and that mystery is in itself a potential conspiracy theory compliments of the conspiracy theory trolls that live online fanning the flames of conspiracy theory nonsense.

There is also a secondary storyline that the book summary alludes to and that is that there is some event in Theo and Gus’s past (back in Tasmania) that the family had buried and has been hiding ever since. This is just one of the catalysts for Theo’s act of protecting Gus. Also, it doesn’t help that Mac comes from a somewhat nefarious family of doomsday preppers, whose suspicious behavior has been on law enforcement’s radar for a very long time. Personally, I’ve always found these people to be some of the wackier types of conspiracy theorists. JMHO

Most of the story flips back and forth between Theo and the online posts of a bunch of conspiracy theorists that revolve around what happened to another member of the forum that they refer to as Primus, who they believe is Dan Murdoch, who was Theo’s mentor/lover that was murdered. The conspiracy theorists believe Primus’s postings were revealing another conspiracy theory regarding a book he was posting about that would reveal another conspiracy. Getting the picture now? Yeah, me neither, but it does make the story more interesting. Anyway, none of this is a spoiler since it all transpires pretty early in the story.

The second half takes a crazy turn and that is where a good chunk of the story goes off the rails. For me, I actually like crazy twists and turns; my enjoyment of a story is not contingent of a story’s level of believability. Unfortunately, it’s not long before the ending begins to become just a humongous, hot mess, which is the same issue that I felt Woman in the Library had too. I really dislike messy endings; they’re kind of a pet peeve of mine. It’s really sad when a writer spends a lot of time, energy and effort creating a good storyline and developing interesting characters only to get to the end of the story and just kind of lets the whole story go up in a blaze, and not in the glorious kind of way either.

The elements of a story that has the most effect on my overall enjoyment of a story are strong characters, interesting storylines, a pace that keeps me engaged and the author’s writing style, which for me includes how well the writing flows and how a writer wraps up the story. Based on the first three elements, I’d give this book a 3.5star rating, if I could. When vacillating about whether or not to round up or down on a story, I rarely feel inclined to round up on stories with clunky, messy endings. This is the case here. I want to thank NetGalley, Poisoned Pen Press for sending me this eARC in exchange for my honest review.

#NetGalley #PoisonedPress #TheMysteryWriter

Compelling storyline. Even though, I did not like the jump in years after the main character disappears. Maybe that could have been a more smoother transition? After following the character day by day and then all of a sudden years went by. It just felt a bit abrupt. Other than that, it was a great read with surprising twists and turns. Great book!

Small note to publisher: there were still a few typos in the books, you probably already found them but wanted to at least mention it.