⚠️ Conspiracy theories

I remember watching Lost and one of the characters was a big conspiracy nut and thinking I'm glad they are rare. But now half of the United States are conspiracy nuts. I tried going into this book with an open mind. The mystery of this book is convoluted. I listened to the audiobook and sometimes I would have to pause it and pull out the book and read what I just listened too. The book itself is confusing and full of conspiracies. Theo the main character is a young woman who trusts way too easily. I shook my head at her, most of the book. The cover drew me in and the book
itself did not.
The narration was well done.

Thank you NetGalley and Dreamscape Media for the eAudiobook ARC! The Mystery Writer is the latest crime novel from Sulari Gentill, author of The Woman in the Library. Theo Benton arrives at her brother Gus's door, fleeing school and looking to start over and follow her passion for writing. Theo finds a writing spot in town as well as a mentor and lover, Dan. But when Dan is murdered, and the evidence starts piling up against Gus, Theo decides to do whatever it takes to release the people she cares about, even if it means disappearing. With several twists and interesting connections (as well as conspiracy theorist groups and corrupt high money and power companies), The Mystery Writer is sure to have you on the edge of your seat. Katherine Littrell offers a masterful performance to the audiobook to round out a solid story.

Theodosia Benton drops out of law school to become a writer. She moves in with her brother. She starts going to a bar to write during the day and meets an author that she forms a relationship with. When the author is murdered chaos insues for Theodosia. This is an exciting thriller with twists and turns. The narrator does a great job bringing the book to life in the audiobook.

The book had big shoes to fill coming on the heels of The Woman in the Library, and I think it did a pretty good job. Theo Benton is an aspiring writer in her early 20s who leaves college and moves in with her brother to pursue her writing career. By chance she meets and becomes close with a very famous writer. Then she finds his corpse. Then she finds another corpse. Then she becomes seriously tied up in both the murder investigation AND in the murderplot badguysituation.

There were some really interesting characters in this book and the plot was intricate and detailed. I don't remember too many big surprises or twists, but the fast pace and intricacy kept me engaged and eager to know what would be next.

I listened to the audiobook of this novel and thought it was really well done. The reader was great with voices and the tone and inflection always felt appropriate.

Thank you to Dreamscape Media and NetGalley for the advanced audiobook copy. I loved this book. The narrator was excellent. I especially loved that the setting so was close to home. I admittedly preordered this book.

Thank you to Netgalleym Sulari Gentill and Dreamscape Media for the eAudio of The Mystery Writer.
Narrated by Katherine Littrell

I did enjoyed listened to this book. Katherine Littrell had a lovely paced voice for this particular book and kept me engaged. I feel that if I has read this book, it may of been a DNF for me.

I found the plot quite slow and even though I liked the interactive parts of the conspiracy theory online group, I felt the book was bulked out with a little too much. The bones of the book, the dynamics between Theo, her bro Gus and Mac ( Gus' friend ) were pretty good and I enjoyed that. Even though I understood the ending, I felt it didn't really suit the narrative or the direction of the book. I shall be looking into reading more of Sulari's books though as I can see lot of things I like about their writing.

3 stars for me.

Book Review: The Mystery Writer
Stars: 4 X 5
Author: Sulari Gentill @sularigentill
Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press @sourcebooks and DreamScape Media @dreamscape
A big thank you to @netgalley for both the book and audio version of the ARC

Young 22 year old Theodosia Benton arrives at her brother Gus’ door. She came from Canberra Australia to Lawrence Kansas. Gus is a partner at a law firm and Theo has come to the US after leaving Law School. She wants to be a writer.
Gus agrees to Theo living with him and attempting to write her book. Theo ends up heading to Benders a coffee shop/bar to write during the day. It is here that she ends up meeting fellow writing Dan Murdock. Dan has authored many books and is writing a new book himself. Dan and Theo befriend each with Dan acting as her mentor. They become close friends. Theo finishes her manuscript and she fantastic. Theo and Dan have become extremely close and she ask Gus if it is ok to invite Dan to the house to celebrate. Gus is good with this and when Theo is unable to get hold of Dan by phone she goes to his house to invite him. When Theo gets to Dan’s house the front door is ajar and she enters assuming Dan left it open by accident. Theo enters the house looking for Dan and ends up finding his body in the kitchen and he has been murdered. As the police investigate Dan’s death, Theo’s life is turned upside down as she becomes a suspect. This not only affects her life but also Gus’, his coworker and fellow lawyer Jackie and best friend/investigator Mac. Theo decides to try to find out why Dan was murdered. She also believes that this online conspiracy forum Dan was involved in may have been involved. As time goes on and the four of them now delve into the circumstances of Dan’s death it become perfectly clear that their lives are in jeopardy. They must do anything to survive and find Dan’s killer.

The beginning of the book was a bit slow which is to be expected as the author was setting the backstory of all these characters. But I will say once you get through it is an amazing read/listen. I ended up just reading the last third of the book and could no put it down . I will just tell you the ending is amazing. This a great book to read or Listen to. The Audio Narrators do a fantastic job with the audio version too.

Thanks to Poisoned Pen & NetGalley for providing an audio ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I heard great things about Gentill's previous book, so I figured this one would be a slam dunk, but I find myself wondering what the hell I just read. The first 3/4 of the book progress slowly but capably, building a really nice relationship between sibling MCs Theo (Theodosia) and Gus Benton. Throw in Cormac, Gus's "researcher" (read: PI) from his law firm, with his doomsday prepper family, and you've got a cute trio. The book treated stressful criminal situations as ... stressful! Which was nice as they are often taken in stride by fictitious characters. However, as the criminal activity piles up, it seems that the plot gets out of hand for Gentill, and in the last 1/4 of the book, it gets more and more ridiculous, with major time jumps. It feels very rushed after so much slow burn.

The "conspiracy" is dumb, and the cherry on top is that <spoiler>Theo's favorite author of all time, whose book she carries like a security blanket, turns out to be the same writer dude that she falls in love with, and whose body she discovers after his evil talent agency has him killed</spoiler>.

The narrator was great. I just really couldn't get into the story. I had a hard time finding interest in the plot.

The narration was engaging but I just couldn’t keep going as I didn’t care about the plot and honestly was really bored by it and all the omg another person is dead plot.

I read The Woman in the Library and really enjoyed it. It was an entertaining read that kept me guessing the whole book - which is something I really appreciate in my mysteries. I was excited to see what the author would do next and was thrilled when I was approved for an ACL. Thank you Netgalley and Dreamscape Media for my copy in exchange for my honest review.

Let me start off by saying the narrator did a fantastic job on this book. She had differing voices for the characters and consistently was switching between an American and Australian accent. It was really well done.

Unfortunately, the actual story and I did not mesh. The main character, Theo, drove me absolutely batty. She was so naive and trusting while never truly doing anything to help her crazy situation. Let’s just say she couldn’t ever pass up making a horrible decision.

I wasn’t surprised by the mystery and felt irritated by all the drama that occurred. It just felt so over the top at times. When I finished the book I was relieved to step out of the conspiracy laden world it was set in. So while the narration was fabulous the story was not for me.

This book was a cozy mystery on steroids. This book was a full on surprise to me. I love cozy mysteries, but this was so much more. Just this side of a thriller, but still in the comfort zone of cozy. If you love cozy mysteries, but want one on steroids, this is it!

As someone who judges a book by its cover, I was really surprised by this one. It wasn’t what I expected at all, and sadly, it was not my favorite. I really struggled, so much so that I requested the audio ARC and the print copy. I tried reading, listening and combining the two. Unfortunately, this one just fell short for me. I didn’t find any of the characters likable, and the lead was quite gullible. I’m not even sure who died and who lived if I’m being completely honest. Just not my type of story I guess? It read like a cozy mystery, but not quite. I can’t even pinpoint what went wrong here, but I did not enjoy it as much as I’d hoped.

Overall this book was a cozy mystery told as a thriller. If you are confused by that sentence, pick it up and find out see what I’m seeing. There are great triumphs of family, and a community that feels like found family. The story was told in a compelling manner, and I really was invested in Theo.

What I didn’t love— the ending felt rushed,and really zoomed out from the begging cozy-ness. It felt a bit disjointed towards the end, and like someone slammed on the breaks. I felt like I was really intrigued and entertained most of the novel. In a way I wished it was a bit longer to really bring the end out more.

I did an audio version of the book, and it was great.

Chock full of conspiracy crazies and doomsday insanity, this novel will leave you feeling topsy-turvy in the best way.
Theo Benton leaves law school to pursue fiction writing. She moves in with her brother, Gus in Lawrence, KS, and ends up befriending the elusive writer, Dan Murdoch. But when Dan is murdered, Theo becomes the #1 suspect. Suddenly, her world and that of Gus and his friend and PI, Mack, become a waking nightmare. As the bodies pile up, Theo decides sacrifices need to be made and she promptly disappears. Gus and Mack try desperately to find Theo but someone definitely doesn't want them succeeding.
There are interludes in the book that help you to understand why Dan was murdered. And maybe the doomsday enthusiasts aren't so far off the mark with the conspiracies.

*Special thanks to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for this audio e-arc.*

Gentill’s new novel started out with so much promise but eventually failed to deliver. Aussie Theo drops out of law school and lands on the doorstep of her older brother Gus, a lawyer living in their grandfather’s former home in Lawrence, Kansas. Her motivation for leaving with ostensibly her desire to write a novel, which she does in a remarkably short time, during which she strikes up a deep friendship with an established writer. Suffice it to say that this leads to a convoluted story involving murders, conspiracy theories, bad decisions, and lots of naïveté. The pacing increases to a breakneck speed as the book nears its end, revealing a solution that is not believable. The excellent narration pushed my rating from two to three stars. Many readers of Gentill’s previous work will be disappointed by this effort but probably not badly enough to see what her next work brings. I’ll be among them.

The Mystery Writer starts with such a strong premise that ultimately falls flat.

Unfortunately, our MC Theo is so clueless and somehow people around her keep dying. It’s so hard for me to believe a woman who was in law school could be so stupid in so many ways. She constantly was making herself look guilty as well as not seeing a LOT of red flags ahead of time.

As the story went on, I found myself getting more and more frustrated. There are so many side stories that ultimately didn’t add to the story – talking about Qanon-esque forums, doomsday preppers, growing up on a commune, etc. This could have had a much smaller scope and been so much more effective. Also there’s a very jumpy timeline and point of view shift around the 75% mark and I found it totally ruined the flow of the story that was already being set up.

I did really like the characters of Gus and Mac (and of course, Horse). They were really well conceptualized, and I loved the family dynamic with Gus and Theo. It just wasn’t enough to carry the rest of the book.

I had no real idea how I was going to feel about this book. In "The Mystery Writer," Sulari Gentill leads readers through a thrilling journey, turning the literary world on its head where a writer's voice becomes a controlled and weaponized tool. The setting is really what caught my eye as I live 2 hours away from Lawrence Kansas and I can tell the premise of the book was based on the author's personal life. With that being said, The mystery/adventure you are taken on is weird at the very least. When I started it, it just seemed kind of all over the place, little things here and there and it seemed as if it was like that through the whole book. It was as if the author had so many different ideas, that she just threw them all into this book. Random tidbits that made some very small connection to some other very small tidbits and so on. Nevertheless, I continued the book because the characters were great. and the story itself was interesting and twisty.

Thank you to NetGalley for this advanced reader's copy.
Unfortunately this book was no for me. I found the plot dragging and uninspiring.

My first book by this author, definitely not my last. This was such a fascinating, captivating story. The end seemed a bit grandiose, but the story was enjoyable all the same.
I listened to the audiobook of this story and the narrator did an excellent job.