"Death in the Downline" was so good! It's almost like a cozy mystery but darker. The MLM content is so spot on. It was humorous at times, but I caught how sordid it all is at the same time. I changed my mind about the murderer so many times because the author kept adding layers. I enjoyed this so much, and I can wait to read more from Maria Abrams.

Thank you Quirk Books for a free ARC in exchange for an honest review.

The actual mystery was uninteresting and I didn't care about any of the characters. I wanted to like it - I liked the conceit/setting but there were just too many plot holes for me.

This was a fun, quick read. Thank you to NetGalley and to Quirk Books for granting my wish.

I really loved the skewering of mlms. While I don't have any personal experience working in them, I've definitely been approached. I thought it was great that Abrams didn't make fun of the actual consultants. She saved her wrath for the upper echelon and showed how they target women just trying to make ends meet and take care of their families.

The death part of the book happens around the halfway point and I don't know if that worked that well. The thriller aspect was fun and, all in all, I enjoyed Death in the Downline by Marie Abrams.

Down on her luck, Drew moves back to her hometown and reconnects with old friends. Those old friends have an "excellent business opportunity" to help Drew get back on her feet. But when one of the girls in the downline ends up dead, Drew knows she has to get to the bottom of it.

This book was so slow. It took almost half of the book to get to the real plot. I love anti-MLM content, but this just felt like the author took all of the talking points from an anti-MLM video and regurgitated it into the book. I think the audience for this book was cozy mystery readers, which I am not.

I feel like I’ve been waiting years for someone to write this book. The moment I got wind of it, I added it to by TBR and wished for it on NetGalley. I was beyond excited to get an advance proof last night and devoured this novel in mere hours. For me, this was like if someone novelized r/antimlm and I loved it. From the beginning, I was instantly hooked and read the first 80% in one sitting!

What worked for me:
🔺No victim-blaming here: throughout the story, there’s interwoven delineation between the women who get sucked into MLMs (victims) and the true predators (top of the pyramid) while underscoring that the women who get manipulated into these scams are, empathically, not stupid.
🔺 Our cast: Drew, Steph, and Jenny were especially compelling characters for me. I particularly liked Drew and Steph’s backstory, relationship, and how determined they are to heal/rekindle their childhood friendship.
🔺 The writing was excellent: superb commentary on MLMs, inventive use of mixed media, and some actual laugh-out-loud moments (honestly, that death script with the GOODBUY coupon code made me howl - it’s totally tone deaf and utterly believable for these companies!)
🔺 The sense of place: a dying small town in the NE, was expertly done and even though my small town experiences are north of the border, I could vividly imagine Clearfield and its inhabitants
🔺 While a little predictable and straightforward, I had heaps of fun with the overall mystery, story, and found the ending satisfying
🔺 This book is an exciting new channel for the antimlm message and I sincerely hope it reaches people who need to hear it. I think the structure of the book will help immensely with this: it paints a convincingly realistic portrayal the insidious recruitment and manipulation process, especially in the first 40%
🔺The chapter headings have little pyramids 😂

What I wasn’t so keen on:
🔻Second book I’ve read this week that expressly names Penguin Publishing for a character’s book deal. I really hate advertising in fiction. Even more so when I found out Penguin is a distributor for this imprint.

I highly recommend this book!

This was a fun, gripping mystery! I loved how the author managed to capture the essence of MLMs and those who "run their own businesses" under one. It felt so real and really accurately painted a picture of the dark side of MLMs and the negative repercussions they can have for sellers and their families. Drew was an engaging character and I liked getting to see her evolve over the story, from down on her luck journalist, to LuminUS consultant, to solving the mystery of the mysterious LuminUS deaths. I also really enjoyed Steph's character and how the author slowly revealed how and why she had changed. Overall, a really great read and one I will definitely recommend to mystery lovers and MLM haters alike.

The story is about an MLM that sells products that aren't what they seem. The distributors are forced to make their quotas each month. The main character, Drew, has just been laid off and needs a job. Her best friend from childhood tells her that LuminUS will make her more money than she could ever wish for. By the looks of her friends life she's right. This is only the beginning of the nightmare Drew is about to enter.

This was a fun and twisty mystery that did a great job of satirzing the MLM industry.

It's 2018 and Drew is a down on her luck journalist who has had to move back ot her hometown. While there, she has a run in with her old high school best friend Steph, who tells her she has an amazing opportunity for her to earn money. Soon, she has moved into Steph's house and has started selling LuminUs, which is skincare MLM company. After a crazy weekend at the annual conference, one of her team members ends up dead. Drew's journalistic sense starts to wonder if LuminUS is all that they seem and if she and Steph are in danger.

This was a fast paced thriller that kept me on the edge of my seat. I loved how the chapters were intercut with texts, blog posts, and emails to build out the world even more. I really liked Drew as a character and loved how crazy everything got so quickly. It had a lot of twists that I wasn't expecting and very satisfying conclusion. This was a great read and I hope to read more of this author in the future.

This darkly humours comedy is irreverent and smart. Well written and smartly crafted. You’ll struggle to put this down.

This was just plain fun! I find MLMs absolutely fascinating and then to combine it with a little murder mystery?? It was everything I wanted it to be and more!

This is 100% for all the #bossbabes who #hustle and wanna #retireyourhusband! (I have no husband)

This was great - fab concept, really well researched (I wonder if the author knows people who have been taken in by MLMs in real life...), and really fantastically paced. I was gripped from the start, Drew's unfortunate run of luck making her a perfect mark for the LumiUS ladies. A great summer read and I'm really grateful for the chance to read and review this book.

Oh, how I loved this book. If you've ever been in an MLM, or if your friends have been, you'll relate to it pretty hard. The main character, Drew, is back in her Jersey hometown after failing out of New York City. Her dream is to become a serious journalist, but she's only ever gotten contract jobs that easy fall through. Desperate for money, she takes a meeting with her childhood friend, Steph. Steph offers her "the opportunity" - shilling for LuminUS, an MLM that claims to make women beautiful through supplements and facial creams. Drew has the "in" with the bigwigs at the company because Steph is one of them. When one of those women is murdered, Drew starts to investigate, and she realizes there is more to LuminUS than meets the eye. The murder doesn't happen until the halfway point, so there is a lot of setup, but it's needed to see out the rest of the plot. If you liked HEY, HUN by Emily Lynn Paulsen, you'll love this.

This is an MLM murder mystery quick read. While definitely a newer concept I hadn’t read before, I was a little bored with the story. There weren’t really a lot of twists and it was a bit predictable.

This was a fun, funny, quick book that I devoured in about 4 hours, tops. There were some really funny, cute parts, and of course the mystery behind the "silver lotus"/LuminUS brand. It was very on the nose regarding mlms and the type of woman who fall prey to those types of business models, as anyone who has ever done so can attest. Definitely would be a book to throw in your beach bag or take on a long car trip.