So many twists and turns to keep you up at night! Rowan is the town medical examiner and her husband a police detective and they are at their daughter's school play when they are called out to a crime scene. It is the murder of a high school girl, one of their daughter's friends. They told their daughter to get a ride home with their neighbor but when they checked in they found out she did not and probably walked home but never arrived. Now she is missing. First a murdered girl and now their daughter is missing. Hang on to your seat because there are so many suspects from the school drama teacher to other students to the neighbor's daughter. Do they really know Chloe at all? Twists and turns and more murders. Black Harbor is a scary place to live.

I’m conflicted. So I really enjoyed the twist in this. However, I was put off by the comments on a teenagers weight??? It has no relevance to the story. And the commentary of poverty and the “crack houses”?

Thank you to #Netgalley for the advanced reading. I was so excited to not only have my hardcopy from Book of the Month in advance, but I was also awarded access to an advanced audiobook version as well from Netgalley. This allowed me to read this one fairly quickly. It was a little slow at the very beginning but it quickly became apparent that I needed to get to the end of this one as soon as possible. I was hooked.

Medical Examiner Rowan Winthorp and her husband Detective Axel Winthrop are thrusted in the middle of an investigation when one girl is found murdered and another, their daughter and classmate of the murdered girl, is missing. What ensues is a cat and mouse game with fellow student Libby who is obssessed with taxidermy and the drama teacher Mr Cutler who is rumored to have been having an affair with the missing 15 year old Chloe. The suspect list continues to grow and your mind will jump from suspect to suspect.

This was my first Hannah Morrissey book but definitely will not be the last one. I didn't realize this was #3 in the Black Harbor series when I started so I will go back and read the other two as soon as I get a chance.

I requested this one because it might be an upcoming title I would like to review on my Youtube Channel. However, after reading the first several chapters I have determined that this book does not suit my tastes. So I decided to DNF this one.

Although I overall liked the narrator I did feel Rowan's voice was a tad too slow sounding. I think this was a semi predictable thriller. It was disturbing with young girls going murdered but liked that it had a semi happy ending.

Book #3 about an abysmal town that we read is just convoluted with crime and murders but where adults let their kids run willy nilly through a path that just screams murder me.

You can read this just fine as a standalone as only the two remains the same. The main characters are different each book but there are mentions of previous events. You're not missing anything not reading the others in the series.

Rowan and Axel are called away to a murder scene leaving their daughter alone, yet again. She goes missing and may either be a suspect or victim. Rowan is an ME and Axel a detective. Their marriage feels forced. They connect better to others than each other...and I felt zero connection to them as a reader.

Neither should be working the case...but due to a hiring freeze, budget cuts, etc etc, they're both working it. Poster children for why you don't work cases you're tied to.

The highlight for me was reading the killers POV towards the end of this book. Maybe of it had been sprinkled in more I would've liked the book a lot more.

When I'm Dead by Hannah Morrissey is the perfect spooky book to put you in a Halloween mood!

I hadn’t known this was book number three in the Black Harbor series, but after some help from fellow Bookstagrammers, and a little additional research, I decided to treat this book as a stand alone. Of course, I absolutely have plans to go back and read the first two books in the series, because I've heard they're amazing as well!

The wide cast of characters, combined with the fast pace felt a little overwhelming initially, but eventually I got a grasp on everything. Once I was no longer trudging through muddy waters, the writing began to really shine. Maybe shine is the wrong term... how about glisten in a sliver of light like fresh blood… because that's how dark the descriptions and word usage are! They are as dark as can be, and I devoured Morrissey’s writing! Even describing mundane things, the best synonyms are chosen to evoke the creepiest of images.

I really loved Rowen, Medical Examiner and mother of missing Chloe. I found myself drawn into the narrator's voice when she spoke, and I was intrigued by her secretive past. I connected with Rowen as a mother, and straight up realized that I have a penchant for reading about gore, which there was a decent amount of it, as Rowen works with crime scenes and dead bodies.

Highlights:
-multiple perspectives and narrators
-Halloween season with appropriate spookiness
-dark wordage
-blood and dead bodies

This one really made me want to read more true crime books, and I’m sure lovers of that genre will find many similarities to this book as well!

Thank you NetGalley, St. Martin's Press, Minotaur Books and Macmillan Audio for the complimentary copies to read and review.

This is the third book that I’ve read from this author. I can’t wait to read her next book! I would say it’s a five star book for me but a four star narration. The voice of the girl was a little hard to understand. I had to keep turning the volume up. This book had lots of twists and kept me guessing. I can’t wait to hand sell this book.

Two murdered girls, one missing, and so many people holding secrets. This novel takes the reader on many twists and turns and leaves you guessing until nearly the end.

I enjoyed this book a lot. I do think that it got a little dull in some places and that the story line of Rowan and the accidental death of the girl from her anesthesiologist days was a little overplayed throughout the book, but overall the book was enjoyable!

Ooh, I absolutely loved this mystery! So atmospheric and layered, When I’m Dead kept me hooked until the very end. I also loved how it ended, there were delicious twists and a great explanation for everything that happened! Definitely the perfect Halloween read!

I believe this is the first I’ve read by this author…although it is third in the series. That being said, it can definitely be read as a stand alone.

When I’m Dead by Hannah Morrisey.

Chloe is a teenage girl playing the lead part in her HS play Beetlejuice.
Her parents, Rowan and Axel are there, but called away, as one is the Medical Examiner and the other is Police. Unfortunately, one of Chloe’s classmates has been found murdered! And then Chloe herself disappears…
And the murders continue…
As everyone is looking for Chloe, multiple scenarios are raised.
Who is doing this? And why?
And, who’s next??
Multiple kids are interviewed…as well as teachers.
But when the truth is finally revealed…well, I never saw that coming?!?!

3 1/2 ⭐️⭐️⭐️💫 for me.

Thanks to #NetGalley and #MacmillanAudio for an ARC of the audiobook.

Release date is 10.31.23.
#HannahMorrisey #WhenI’mDead

Look for all my future reviews on Instagram @ #BookReviews_with_emsr

Happy Reading!! 📚📖

Thank you, NetGalley, for a copy of When I’m Dead in audio for an honest review.

While I was aware this was part of a series, I decided to give it a go without reading the first two books. There were definitely hits/snippets that eluded to past events, but I didn’t feel I was missing crucial story plots by starting here.

The audiobook was very engaging with multiple narrators, though there were so many characters it was hard at times to keep them straight. There weren’t really any twists, which was fine, but the ending was lacking some pizzazz for me.


Overall, 3 solid ⭐️.

I am being such a nice girl here rounding up to 3 stars!
When an author sits down to write a book. I gather from author interviews I have heard, spend hours researching and fact checking their books before publishing. I believe Ms. Morrissey did all of her research in the STAR tabloid (not the online edition, we are talking the kind they use to sell in the Kroger checkout line, you know the one that claims that Princess Di is still alive and was just abducted by aliens, or some crazy shennanigans like that (Superbad--what a film!) She is living in a bit of a fantasy world here.

We find ourselves in Black Harbor apparently the Durham of Michigan (Or Illinois, I can't remember) Crime, drugs, prostitution and vandilism are rapent. The ME, Rowan is married to a Detective Axel they have a very robotic marriage it felt like. They liked their job and spend more time with their co workers than one another. Their daughter is playing the starring role in Beetlejuice but they are called away because a girl from the high school has been murdered. So like any responsible parent they leave their teenage daughter to find her way home even though the girl that was murdered was walking alone.....excuse me while I go take the trophy from the Wormwoods in Matilda of worst parents in the world award to give it to Axel and Rowan.---Well well well, guess what? Chloe goes missing so thus sets this book in motion. As the investigation heats up, another classmate turns up dead, and appears to have a strong motive for killing her two classmates, but so do some of the faculty and students at the school.....
This is where things get Unicornish. Rowan and A are allowed to “work” the case where their daughter is either
1. A suspect or 2. Been murdered. If you ever wondered why this is not allowed these 2 knuckleheads put on a Academy Award Winning Performance why. Blaming one another, seeking counsel from co workers, not coming together as united, bullying other suspects...I could go on. It was beyond insane how unrealistic this police procedural was...A becomes unhinged and even gets caught up convinced his daughter is a murder.
Like, what? Okay enough man bashing….Rowan was terrible. Apparently she was a anesthesiologist and allowed a young girl to die on her watch (a VERY weak scenario was described totally not possible even if the hospital was run by the DMV) and she keeps saying OVER and OVER and OVER “Karma” “It’s what I deserve” . I really had a hard time connecting with her because I am not sure how unworried and more concerned about solving the murder case than finding her daughter.
Then we had Libby—I won’t even go down that path. What was up with that? It was just sad the comments she made about herself and her body.

Let’s wrap this burrito up….the storyline was entertaining enough because **WAIT consider this the consequence of eating a Taco Bell burrito then going to run sprints**What high school in a messed up town like Dark Harbor allows a Taxidermy class…apparently there is not enough money to staff a full police force, but yeah let’s give these corrupt dark kids a class stuffing dead animals…that will produce some productive normal citizens*—**Resume normal broadcasting** I wanted to know what happened and I was really kind of hoping for a twisted end…but sadly it was about as predictable as someone from Carborro driving a Prius.

Thank you Netgalley for allowing me to review this advanced copy read of “When I’m Dead”. I was not influenced or paid for this honest review.

This book drags on and on. I finished it and really felt nothing for the characters or the narration.

Blurb: On a bone-chilling October night, Medical Examiner Rowan Winthorp investigates the death of her daughter’s best friend. Hours later, the tragedy hits even closer to home when she makes a devastating discovery―her daughter, Chloe, is gone. But, not without a trace.

A morbid mosaic of clues forces Rowan and her husband to question how deeply they really knew their daughter. As they work closely to peel back the layers of this case, they begin to unearth disturbing details about Chloe and her secret transgressions…details that threaten to tear them apart.

Amidst the noise of navigating her newfound grief and reconciling the sins of her past, an undeniable fact rings true for Rowan: karma has finally come to collect.

Hannah Morrissey takes us back to Black Harbor in her new book - When I'm Dead.

"On a chilly October night, Medical Examiner Rowan Winthorp is called out to investigate the death of a young girl. A victim that turns out to be her daughter's best friend. And now her daughter is missing. As Rowan and her husband search for their daughter, they're forced to confront things they didn't know about their daughter - things that threaten to tear them apart.

And another girl is found murdered..."

This is a police procedural, without much visible police work. Axel is a detective but he has a conflict. We don't really see how the police investigation is going but family and neighbors stumble into important facts. Morrissey gives the reader just enough clues and reveals to keep them invested.
Morrissey paints a bleak, dismal picture of Black Harbor. There's a malaise that infects everyone. Rowan and Axel are torn apart because of their missing daughter. Neither knows how to handle the other's emotions. Libby is fascinated by dead things and has plenty to hide.
Morrisey hides the killer in plain sight. I guessed it but not the whole story. Halloween is the perfect release day - especially with the haunted house surprise from Morrissey. It's a wild, creepy ending - worthy of Black Harbor.

There's a wonderful audiobook performance from the full cast. They capture the despair and confusion and anxiety.

Some great fiction from Morrissey.

This is book 3 in the Black Harbor series, but it can be read as a stand-alone. The town is really the only constant, the characters change. In this book, a police detective and the town medical examiner, who are married, find themselves in the middle of a murder investigation of their daughter’s school friend, Maddie. But during the last little while, their own daughter has become stand-off ish and difficult lately and some signs are pointing to the possibility that maybe she was the one who killed her friend. That is, until their daughter goes missing, and her last words to them come back to haunt them “You’ll love me more when I’m dead.” because she feels like they care more about their jobs than her, but Black Harbor is a town riddled with crime that just keeps getting worse.
You have to really suspend reality for this one because there are some glaring details that stand out-like that they let the ME and the detective work the case of their own daughter. And that if the town was so bad, and these people were successful in their jobs, why didn’t they just move away? I, thankfully, know that this is what fiction is for, and am able to put this stuff aside and step into the other world and enjoy it for what it is, beside the fact that the killer was fairly obvious from the beginning. Other than that, it is what it is, a popcorn thriller.
Full cast narration added to the story.
Thanks to Macmillan Audio and NetGalley for this audiobook arc in exchange for my review.

I loved When I'm Dead by Hannah Morrissey. This was really excellent as a multi actor audiobook as each character had a distinct style and voice that really made the story stand out. I listened to this on a long drive last week and it held my attention the whole time, which is impressive as often I wander when a book gets into a third hour. Thank you to MacMillan audio and St Martin's press for review copies.
This book has a lot of themes I like: well done police procedural placed in a well developed set of characters and contexts. A focus on adolescents and high school and their messy social lives and relationships. Adults who are still figuring things out as well. And a solid set of clues/reveals that made the story satisfying.

Morrissey has a way of really making Black Harbor a place that is hard to forget about and I loved the complexity of her Rowan character and how this book leaned into her past, her marriage, and her daughter as well. It is dark, esp when you learn what the book title means, but it is so very well done as well. Even when characters or behaviors are unlikable, there is an underlying empathy to the writing and storytelling that really stands out.

Solid spooky season read that takes place in October and culminates on Halloween. I enjoyed this audiobook and always love ensemble casts, but was a distracted by how mumbly the narrator for Rowan was compared to the other narrators, I feel like there were a lot of red herrings in the storyline, which made it tricky for me to be sure that my hypotheses were correct until the very last moment.

Oh man, I needed a crime thriller to deliver and this delivered. A Halloween pub date is perfection for this one! There definitely are some unrealistic parts to this (high school taxidermy?) but I was so engrossed that it didn't matter. The killer wasn’t shocking but the elements surrounding them were so it was an enjoyable ending. Listed as a third, this isn’t a series. These books are in the same universe (re: town) but you don’t need to read any in order for it to make sense. I still haven’t read HELLO, TRANSCRIBER so that’s on my immediate TBR.

Thanks to NetGalley for the advanced audiobook

I really enjoyed this book. The narrator were excellent.