Oh heavens I am going to love this series. The Busy Body is the first in the series by Kemper Donovan. You have a former female presidential candidate and a ghostwriter who find themselves with a murder to solve, a whodunit, one that has you turning the page to see what happens next. It is quick, clever mystery that I just love. Of course when I started this book it was snowing and with the book being set in Maine it made me long to visit Maine.
I did get the audio verision as well from NetGalley so while I was at work I was able to listen and found that on 2x speed the narrator was perfect. She, Eva Kaminsky, was great!

Thank you to Kensington Books and Kemper Donovan for the physical ARC! Thanks to NetGalley for the audiobook ARC!
I cannot wait for book 2!

The narrator is so fun and I hope there’ll be more in the series! The whole way through it’s an absolute riot - I really thought this was going to be a five star read, but the end disappointed. Rather than everything clicking into place naturally, it required a villain monologue where the bad guy twirls her mustache and explains her wrongdoings in a long monologue.

Premise - a middle aged ghostwriter takes on a new client, failed presidential candidate and former senator, Dorothy. She expects big things, but not quite as big as she gets: Dorothy’s neighbor is killed and Dorothy decides to figure out whodunnit.

The book’s greatest strength is its snarky narrator, a ghostwriter with a snarky wit and a penchant for fourth wall breaking (which I enjoy). It’s also well paced, so the momentum of the stories carries you right along to the anticlimactic end.

📚 Series or Standalone: standalone (but I hope the narrator will appear in more mysteries)
📚 Genre: murder mystery
📚 Target Age Group: adult
📚 Cliffhanger: no

✨ Will I Reread: no
✨ Recommended For: fans of locked room mysteries

💕 Characters: 5/5
💕 Writing: 4/5
💕 Plot: 4/5
💕 Pacing: 5/5
💕 Unputdownability: 5/5
💕 Enjoyment: 4/5
💕 Book Cover: 5/5

Thanks, NetGalley and Kemper Donovan, for the gifted ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Podcaster (All About Agatha) Kemper Donovan's THE BUSY BODY features a former senator and a no-name ghostwriter as they team up to solve a cozy murder mystery whodunit with a twisty mix of Dorothy Parker and Agatha Christie contemporary classic.

Set in a small town in Maine, the narrator is a ghostwriter (GW) and teams up with a former Senator, Dorothy Gibson (Hillary Clinton), who lost the Presidential election, to write her memoir.

She moves in, and shortly thereafter, when they go to a wine store, they run into a neighbor, Vivian, and a selfie is snapped.

The next day, the woman is dead in the bath (by suicide), or so it appears. The duo starts their sleuthing and investigation to solve the crime mystery.

We do not get any backstory of the nameless narrator, leaving readers in the dark, so you feel removed and distant from this character.

While THE BUSY BODY will appeal to a certain audience, it was not for me. I prefer less dialogue and more action and did not care for conversational style with the asides and the romance part.

I am not a big fan of cozy mysteries and would not be interested in the series. I will pass on this one—not worthy of the hype, in my opinion.

FORMATTING: I will have to concur with some of the other reviewers on the topic of the digital ARC provided. It had very bad formatting, making it very challenging to read, and I found this very distracting and unenjoyable. There were NO chapter breaks, words strung together, sentences ending in the middle of the page with large spaces after, and continued on the next line with no double-spaced paragraph breaks.

AUDIOBOOK: I attempted to switch to the audiobook, and the narrator was so boring I had to stop as it ground on my nerves. It was like some robotic voice reading line after in the same tone with no emotion narrated by Eva Kaminsky.

Thanks to Kensington Books (John Scognamiglio Book) and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest opinion.

Blog review posted @
JudithDCollins.com
@JudithDCollins | #JDCMustReadBooks
Pub Date: Jan 23, 2024
My Rating: 3 Stars