I'll admit that while I read the first in the series, I didn't remember much. There were a lot of references back, but the story in Rivals was enough on its own to draw me in and through any confusion I had about the plot of Verifiers. Enjoyed this one and really think the concept is so unique.

“The Rivals” by Jane Pek is a fun and creative mystery. I like how the author incorporates current trends such as AI, online dating and bots (or synths). I also appreciate the diversity of characters and how New York City, particularly parts of Brooklyn, are like a character in the story. The pared down dialogue also does a good job of capturing a lot of character and emotion with sparse words. At times, I wasn’t sure where the story threads where going but they all came together very creatively at the end. I look forward to reading the third novel in this trilogy. Jane Pek’s writing offers an entertaining and deep commentary on our times. Thanks to Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor and NetGalley for the eARC.

Claudia is sort of a secret agent. She works for a dating detective agency and uses skills from detective novels. When she and her coworkers discover an AI conspiracy taking place through the dating apps, they are in more danger than they could have imagined. This follow-up to The Verifiers delves deeper into the conspiracy taking place and what parties are involved. Claudia's relationships are also at the forefront of this novel as she manages family issues and new crushes. The mystery was good and I liked how it called itself out on certain expected plot points.

Claudia and team are back at it again when a few odd clients make them look deeper at the situations. While I really enjoyed the weaving of the fictional Chinese detective series in the first book, the combination of it and now a fictional film series and then a play got to be overwhelming. There were too many distractions from the main story line, so much so that at one point I wasn't even sure what the actual ongoing story was! I liked delving more into Claudia, her family, friends, and coworkers lives. They are an interesting collection of people. I hope future books (because I do hope there are future books) are a bit more focused.

I enjoyed The Verifiers, but The Rivals was not quite as much fun. Claudia is still fun to follow, but the story is heavy on the tech-side. There are a lot of characters and threads to keep track, and I'm not sure the resolution matches the buildup. It almost could have been two separate stories. Still, I will continue with this series; Claudia Lin is a great character!

Thank you, Vintage and Netgalley, for an advance ebook in exchange for a fair review.

I really enjoyed Jane Pek’s The Verifiers but I found this sequel to be much less compelling apart from the last few chapters when the plot suddenly simplified.

Claudia is still working at Veracity, along with her crush Becks Rittel and tech genius Squirrel, a company that verifies the reality of dating profiles for suspicious matches. After they discovered, in the last book, that Soulmate, one of the big three matchmaker companies, was using “synths” (bot profiles) for dubious purposes, Veracity now has a new challenge: Let’s Meet, another matchmaker, is apparently cloning profiles of existing clients. When one of these clients dies in a questionable cycling accident, Claudia is once again on the detective trail.

I have to admit i got completely bogged down in the cloning plot as well as a secondary plot in which Claudia is verifying a very attractive woman and accidentally goes on a date with her. I found the whole thing a bit of a trudge and while things were resolved by the end - at least I think they were, I was sort of past caring by then - there’s still plenty of open questions for another book which I will probably pass on.

There’s plenty of enjoyment to be had as Claudia brings in the detective skills she has learned from the novels of Inspector Yuan (an Asian Hercule Poirot) and his hapless sidekick Constable Zhang. This time she adds spycraft to her repertoire as she gets sucked into the fictional world of the Cold War Somnang Files and arranges to meet a mole on the High Line.

I felt that this go round there was less exploration of what it means to be human and more just rather confusing tech stuff. It is only toward the end, where Claudia (and I) finally understand what’s going on that I felt the ripple of pleasure I’d got from the first book. I was still engaged by Claudia and her family's dynamics and find Claudia a captivating protagonist, but I just wanted less plot.

Thanks to Vintage and Netgalley for the digital review copy.

Claudia Lin is co-owner of Veracity, a digital detective agency of sorts that verifies that dating site users are who they say they are. I really enjoyed the first book of this series, The Verifiers; however, this one felt pretty flat and forced. The mystery never really took off and the book mainly focused on the tension between Claudia and the other co-owner which became repetitive . Thank you to Netgalley for a chance to read and review this book.

I feel like this series is seriously under-appreciated. Even though it's not 100% a Jen book (too much technology I don't really understand) how can anyone not love conflicted Gen Z detective Claudia Lin.

Claudia works for a company that specializes in romantic background checks, and she and the team are hired by a guy to check out his new girlfriend. But Claudia and her co-workers also suspect that the major dating apps are up to no good!

Claudia's romantic life took a surprising turn in this and I am obsessed with her literary musings. I think I enjoyed this more than the first book, The Verifiers.

Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor | Vintage for the ARC.

This is an interesting and relevant look into the online dating world but more specifically the AI involved to match people together for compatibility. Claudia works for a company that people hire to make sure that the online dater is legit in how they have presented themselves until she finds herself involved in a corporate espionage between the match companies and one of their clients ends up dead. I loved the mystery involved and Claudia’s quirkiness but admittedly am maybe too Type A reader and got lost in the technology details of the coding and synths.

Thank you Vintage for my advance copy via NetGalley. My opinions are my own.

We pick up with Claudia Lin after the events of The Verifiers, as she now co-runs Veracity with Becks. Their team is a sort of online detective agency to whom dating New Yorkers are referred by word of mouth when they need to find out if their prospective partners are telling the truth. But along the way, they uncovered an AI plot that they are only starting to understand, and it seems that it may have taken another victim. Now Claudia has to branch out from her detective work to engage in some espionage--recruiting an agent undercover in one of the suspicious dating services, and making sure that her older brother doesn't get sucked down the same hole as one of the previous victims.

I definitely needed reminders of what happened in the Verifiers since it's been about two years since I read it. I was grateful that Pek unspools them slowly through the first 20% or so of the story (hint: this is not a stand-alone book. Read the first one!). I was reminded of why I loved the first one: realistic family drama, LGBTQ+ positivity, and a desire for romantic connection despite past trauma that gets in the way. This one delves more into the ethical and philosophical questions around choice, what people do with it, and what power can be held by influencing it at varying degrees (and the ethics of all that). In an increasingly AI world, what is sentience and what is humanity? This gave a futuristic and science fiction-y bent to the spy tropes and the distrust, and I am totally here for it!

2SLGBTQIA+ Mystery which features an online dating detective who turns to corporate espionage after a client's suspicious death and to stop corrupt matchmakers from using AI profiles.

4/5 stars: This is the second entry in Pek's Verifiers series, which is 2SLGBTQIA+ Mystery that takes place at New York and follows the co-owner of an online dating detective agency who finds herself taking part in corporate espionage after a former client's suspicious death which she believes may be connected to corrupt corporate matchmakers using AI to mine client data. Things get even more complicated when she learns her brother might have unwittingly fallen into the corporation's deadly web through his consulting work and she gets distracted by the romantic tension building between both her work partner and a flirtatious and charming target. She'll have to use all her skills if she's going to figure this out before anyone else is killed. Watch out for the twists and turns, Pek has deftly crafted a mystery that balances the suspects, clues and red herrings and will leave you pondering until the final reveal. With biting humor, Pek's writing and character work are excellent; the characters are well-rounded and complex while remaining incredibly likable. Claudia's a great character and I love catching up with her Veracity colleagues, Becks and Squirrel, and learning more about her family. I really appreciate how Pek looks at how technology is reshaping who we think we are and the ethical issues of companies using AI and more to probe into their customers personal wants and needs. Pek touches on some serious subjects; so take care and check the CWs. While you could read this as a stand-alone, you'll gain so much more by reading the series from the beginning; so be sure to pick up book one, The Verifiers.

I received this eARC thanks to NetGalley and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor | Vintage in exchange for an honest review. Publishing dates are subject to change.

In this second book of the series, Claudia still works for Verifiers, a company that can be hired to verify details of someone's online dating profile. When a potential client that they turned away ends up dead under mysterious circumstances, Claudia and her two co-workers work to uncover it is was part of a bigger scandal involving online dating companies. Claudia is also dealing with her cold and overbearing mother and two siblings who have problems of their own.

I really liked the first book, but this one was slow paced and had lots of tech details that I didn't understand or care about. The last twenty percent of the book was action packed and ended on a cliff hanger (of course, so you have to read the next book). I really like the main character Claudia, her work and family problems, the themes of cultural identity, and the unique world of online dating tech. I think I will read the next one, but it might not be as high on my priority list.

Thank you to Netgalley for the advance copy for review.

This is the second book in the Claudia Lin novels. Claudia continues to work for Verity as a match verifier with the abrasive Becks and elusive Squirrel, navigate the rapids that constitute Lin family dynamics, and use her detective skills to uncover crime. In this novel, the verifiers turn away a client who has found that his matching profile has been cloned, only to hear that he died in a cycling accident. Where most people would take the news as a sad coincidence, Claudia Lin is suspicious. Knowing what she knows about the shady ethics of the matchmaking industry around client privacy, she's convinced that they have moved from making synthetic profiles to boost client numbers, collect user data and potentially sway users' minds to something worse.

I love the way Jane Pek's characters are layered. None are bit roles, NPCs. It helps that Claudia is the quintessential observer, making note of idiosyncrasies and aberrations as well as the surprising ways humans can care for one another. The reader also learns the same about Claudia, a goofy, charming person who recognizes that sometimes you have to be a bad person to be a good person.

I highly recommend the Claudia Lin novels, especially for readers who are interested in how tech companies use your data. You must begin with The Verifiers! There are so many great mystery novels coming out these days, and Jane Pek rates up there with the best of them.

Thanks to Vintage and NetGalley for access to the ARC. Views expressed here are my own, and I am not compensated for my reviews.

I've been looking forward to Jane Pek's next Claudia Lin mystery since I finished the first, The Verifiers. First off, Claudia Lin is an engaging character: a lively, rash, awkward lesbian who has started working for an investigation business that checks the accuracy of individuals' presentation of themselves on dating sites. The people who can afford these investigations can discover what's being hidden and what untruths have been presented before moving to a new level of commitment with a met-online potential partner. Claudia's family is also part of the series: a beautiful sister, a workaholic brother, and their ever-combative mother.

The reason that I gave this volume three stars is as much about me as it is about the book itself. My technology IQ is limited—and the plot this time revolves around the efforts of dating sites to create "synths," non-existent people based on profiles of their existing clients. The long-range goal of these efforts is profit. Are there ways to use the synths to predict client behavior? Might the synths be useful tools for businesses or governments to use? Can we begin to understand/predict human behavior through the use of a sort of "bush-like" understanding of identity (bush-like in the sense of Darwin's evolutionary bush that continually branches out along constantly increasing pathways). The more synths that are created and effectively programmed to resemble a single person, the more businesses can begin to learn an individual's choices along multiple trajectories, not just the one path the actual human will choose.

This is interesting stuff; it also teeters on the edge of my, admittedly, limited tech knowledge. So, I enjoyed the book, but had to do a lot of accepting things without fully understanding them. I get what a synth is, but the profit-making opportunities synths prevent get into complexities I can't get my head fully around. (I confess that I also grow befuddled at times when reading time-travel fiction: too many possible realities blossoming off of existing ones.)

If you enjoy contemporary mysteries, especially those with diverse casts, and have the tech savvy to get a richer understanding of the potential of synths, you're going to love this book. I genuinely enjoyed it, even when I felt unsure of the full implications of events. I received a free electronic review copy of this title from the publisher via NetGalley; the opinions are my own.

As sequels go, this was pretty good! I don’t think it hooked its claws in me as much as the first book did but I still had a good time and enjoyed another ride withour girl Claudia!

Jane Pek’s The Rivals is the perfect follow-up to The Verifiers, keeping all the snark, wit, and heart that made the first book so much fun. This sequel brings Claudia Lin back into the thick of things with her sharp observations, complex family ties, and a mystery that keeps you guessing. Having loved The Verifiers on audio, I was excited to pick this one up in print, and it didn’t disappoint—both formats do justice to Pek’s style and characters.
Pek captures the ups and downs of family and identity beautifully. Claudia’s relationships, especially with her siblings, feel layered and real, mixing humor with genuine warmth. I also loved how Pek blends real literary references with some fictional ones, weaving them into the story in a way that both deepens the plot and adds charm. Some of these references, like the fictionalized murder mystery stories, might be a bit tricky to follow without some background knowledge, but they’re so cleverly woven in that they help move the story along and add depth. There’s even a passing mention of a minor character researching magical realism from Japanese and Latinx perspectives—a small detail, but one that shows Pek is an author after my own heart since I’m a fan of both genres and, of course, Jane Austen!
The story dives into timely topics like AI ethics and privacy without overdoing it, though the gaming language—used in a way that subtly ties into the plot—might leave non-gamers feeling a little lost at times. I managed to keep up, but it can get a bit tech-heavy in parts.The “will-they-or-won’t-they” romance subplot adds a perfect balance of intrigue, and the ending? Another cliffhanger! It’s a mix of frustration and excitement—frustrating because I wanted more answers, and exciting because this likely means a third book is coming.
I wouldn’t say I loved this one more than the first, but it’s definitely on par, which is a high compliment. Pek’s Claudia Lin series is quickly becoming a favorite of mine, right up there with Mia P. Manansala’s Tita Rosie’s Kitchen Mystery Series. If you’re in for a clever, heartfelt mystery with great characters, pick up The Rivals—you won’t be disappointed!

Pek's take on the mystery serial is refreshing and modern. With "The Verifiers" we get brought into a world not unsimilar to ours where dating is getting harder and more complicated due to the changing landscape of the tech industry. "The Rivals" only builds upon that initial premise and this time around adds a espinage element. It's addicting to watch the mystery unfold with Claudia as our hero. Sherlock could learn a thing or two from her.

When I requested the copy for this book, I was interested in the first book and enjoyed the premise, however, as I have started the sequel and continued to get further into the story, I found myself losing interest and finding it hard to separate the two books. While there are new characters, there are recurring characters but there doesn't seem to be much growth and the plot itself doesn't seem interesting enough to lure me in and continue reading.

I have read about 30% in, but I have tried to pick this book up at least 6 different times but have only been able to read, at the most, 40 minutes, before having to shift my attention elsewhere. I really wanted to like this book, and was extremely excited for the ARC, but I just couldn't get into it.

Claudia Lin is back and now co-running Veracity in her dream job. Just as things start to settle down she is contacted by someone with information that could devastate Veracity and other online services. Is a corrupt matchmaking site killing those who know too much? Claudia is back sleuthing again, all the while falling hard for Becks, her colleague, and trying to keep her siblings from falling apart. Another stellar read by Jane Pek.

"A most anticipated book - A witty and thought-provoking mystery that reimagines the spy story to explore the nature of relationships in a digital age: the follow-up to Jane Pek's "thoroughly modern twist on classic detective fiction," The Verifiers (New York Times Book Review)

Claudia Lin - mystery novel superfan and, until recently, clichéd underemployed English major - has scored her dream job: co-running Veracity, a dating detective agency for chronically online New Yorkers who want to know if their prospective partners are telling the truth. Unfortunately, along the way, she and her colleagues - tech savant Squirrel, and the elegant and intimidating Becks - have uncovered a far-reaching AI conspiracy. And the corporate matchmakers may be resorting to murder to protect their secrets.

In the wake of a client's sudden death, Claudia convinces his ex, an industry insider, to turn on his employer and feed the verifiers information about what the powerful dating platforms are really up to. But even as Claudia starts to get a feel for this new genre - just call her Lin, Claudia Lin - she's distracted by the possibility of romance with both Becks and a very charming target. She also fears that her beloved older brother is unwittingly being drawn into the matchmakers' deadly web. And as Becks reminds Claudia: spy tropes dictate that someone you trust will betray you."

Eh, but only sloppy writing and sloppy living means you fall for tropes...