This was a delightful short cozy murder mystery. For an audiobook that is two hours long it manages to fit quite a bit of world building. I loved the unique aspect that humans inhabit a spaceship trying to find a new planet to inhabit. They understand that humans won’t live long enough to survive the journey and they don’t want to lose the knowledge so they create memory banks to back up everyone’s consciousness and create new bodies for them whenever needed.

The exploration of the ship helps move along the story and sprinkle together answers to the murder. Just a great listen.

This was a cute, cozy locked-room murder mystery set on a spaceship where everyone's memories are kept in digital books so people can be placed into new bodies over the course of their long space journey. When the ship's detective awakens in a strange body with her memory book erased and a murder to solve, she has to figure out who's killing people by erasing them--permanently.

This novella is a quick cozy mystery set on a spaceship that’s taking a 1000 year journey to a distant planet for resettlement. To accommodate the long journey, the memories of each passenger are stored in the ships library to be used when the passenger expires. Upon death a new body is grown and the memory book is downloaded into the new body. Theoretically murder should be impossible, but when the ships detective Dorothy, awakes in a strange body she discovers that a murder has indeed been committed.

I especially enjoyed that Dorothy is a knitter who finds out that the body she now inhabits lives in a yarn shop on the spaceship. Isn’t it nice to think that these skills might still be practiced in the eons to come? Waite achieves some very clever and entertaining world building in the span of a hundred - some pages.

A fun quick read and I look forward to more of Dorothy’s adventures as the series progresses.
Highly Recommend for fans of Becky Chambers

wow. WOW! I really love the characters and setting for this story. The mystery was solid and interesting, and I was very excited for the way this ship exists as a place. I am curious to get more into this spaceship civilization and look forward to future stories in the series.

A super fast paced listen! I found this story really interesting. The plot was nice and I enjoyed the characters. Would recommend!

Thank you Macmillan audio for the gifted audiobook

What an interesting genre blend this was!

Is it a mystery? Yes. Is it sci fi? Also yes. Is it fantasy, too? I would argue yes, as we are able to serve memories as cocktails and the process of saving people into books is very much closer to magic than science. Is it a romance? Almost yes, but definitely a relationship book with romantic overtones. Is it literary fiction? Also yes. This is perhaps the most interesting aspect to the writing.

I adore the romantic symbolism of going to the librarian to be “shelved together” and the idea that librarians in this world are a revered and well paid profession. There is so much beauty in the language of this book; at times it was almost a poem.

I would recommend this book to people who love Becky Chambers, folks who enjoyed the Thousand Doors of January, readers of Sarah Gailey, and folks who want a great book club pick with tons of content to discuss in a compact-size book.

ETA: I was able to listen to an audio version of this book also and it was beautifully performed. The narrator has excellent diction and does a variety of voices well.

This was a quick, delightful story filled with the wonders of space travel, horrors of murder and intrigue of Sherlock Holmes meets The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy meets A Psalm for the Wild-Built.

The audiobook is a joy; the narrator Blair Baker brought each and every character (from the ship we're set in to the lovable supporting characters) to life with so much infectious energy, it made the listening experience wonderful!

Thank you NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for giving me the opportunity to read/listen to this book early and share my honest review. All reviews will be posted to my socials (Netgalley, Goodreads, Fable, IG).

This is my first time reading Olivia Waite. Her historical, sapphic romance series, Feminine Pursuits, has been on my to be read list for more than a year. Upon finishing this, I'll definitely be moving that series up the list! This was great fun. I'd love to see this become a cozy mystery series.

This takes common sci-fi tropes such as a generation ship and temporary bodies to a different place. The HMS Fairweather is an intergenerational ship on route to a planet in a distant star system. The passengers are surviving in bodies that can be replaced aboard ship endlessly. This is a thousand year voyage during which the passengers can live and age normally. Upon death, they are loaded into a recreated body and get to do it all over again. Bodies won't be permanent until the ship arrives at its destination. If a person is overwhelmed by life, they can choose to take a break between death and reloading into a recreated body. This is just what our protagonist, Dorothy Gentleman, had chosen when she was rudely awakened by being thrust into someone else's body. Dorothy uses her skills as a ship detective to figure out what happened and why. This is a delightful novella that I hope will be followed by other stories set on this ship, in this world and solved by Dorothy.

This audiobook is masterfully narrated by Blair Baker. She uses slight changes in pitch and tone to voice the other characters. Her voice is light, allowing the story to shine on its own merits. Beautifully done.

Thank you to Olivia Waite, Macmillan Audio, and NetGalley for the opportunity to listen to and review this audiobook. All opinions and viewpoints expressed in this review are my own.

This was a cute entertaining audio novella. Super unique. I enjoyed it! Could have finished it in one sitting since it was 2 hours long, but ended up in 2 days. Would have loved for this to be longer. Will have a Bookstagram review of this and update with the link below later this week.

A cozy sci-fi murder mystery novella? Yes please!

This was short and interesting and just fun. I hope we get more and would even love a full-length novel in the world. The way memory is stored and transferred is super interesting. Highly recommend!

This is the best quick read you could find if you’re looking for a fast mystery in a cozy sci-fi setting. I love a great sci-fi concept and this story has it all: an interstellar ship, new bodies for passengers to start new lifetimes, a library that contains your memories and experiences to upload into new bodies, and a mystery that begins when the ship's detective wakes up in someone else’s body.

For a very short read, the pacing is incredible. This looks like it will be a series so I cannot wait to see more of the characters and hope that we get to know them a little better each book as that is the downside to a book of this length.

FOUR AND A HALF STARS

While traveling through space in a interstellar generational ship, society has found a unique way to preserve the lives and knowledge of its inhabitants by downloading their memories into "books" which can then be uploaded to an individual's rejuvenated clone. When Dorothy Gentleman wakes up in a body that is not her own, she is determined to understand how this could have occurred. In her investigation, we are introduced to an elaborate criminal scheme, and an interesting cast of characters. This book felt like the first installment to a very promising world and I cannot wait to read what I hope will be the next in many installments.

Murder by Memory by Olivia Waite, brought to life by Blair Baker's amazing narration, is a great cozy SciFi Mystery. My one pet peeve in an audio is when a narrator has such a narrow range that you cannot distinguish the different characters in a book. Baker's ability to give each character a distinct voice made it easy to identify the characters in this audio version of the book.

Finally, if you liked The Spare Man by Mary Robinette Kowal or The Stardust Grail by Yume Kitasei then this is the book for you.

Thank you Macmillan Audio and NetGalley for the opportunity to listen to this audiobook. All opinions are my own.

I really enjoyed this book. It was a quick read! I liked the main character and scene setting. Will this one become a series? It seems like this world should be written about more. I would be willing to read another book by this author!

What a delight! Miss Marple in space! All the elements of cozy mystery are there, except we get a sci-fi setting made cozy by tea, knitting, and furnishings that feel as cozy as any cozy fantasy or holiday romance. Olivia Waite KNOWS cozy mystery. The murder happens off page in what could be a small country village, but Waite brings something new to the table in the WAY she uses sci-fi. Very clever. Will recommend and gladly have her on the podcast if she wants to discuss it.

A sci-fi cozy? Sign me up. This was a quick listen and I could definitely have listened to more. It reminded me of Andy Weir’s Artemis but on a ship in outer space instead of the moon. I hope this becomes a series.

This was a fun short story. Such an interesting look into a sci fi murder mystery. I did not know it was a short read until I started but I am glad it was. I was all for a plot that was straight to the point.

A futuristic way of looking at how life could turn out. Being able to reuse your mind/brain just in another body was so interesting and really fun to listen to. The narrator did a great job as well.

5 out of 5 stars!

Thank you to netgalley and Macmillan audio for allowing me an early copy of this to read!


This was such a fantastic and fun cozy mystery. I loved that it was set in the future. on a ship and yet it felt homey. I loved Dorothy and all the other great characters. Olivia Waite was very successful at weaving an intriguing and fun mystery in such a short amount of time. Blair Baker did a wonderful job of narrating. I can't wait for a sequel, there must be a sequel.

What a FUN book! It was a quick, cozy sci-fi mystery. Because of its brevity, the scientific component was simple and the way the mystery played out was REALLY interesting! Thanks, NetGalley!

This was a quick, easy read that I thoroughly enjoyed. I loved the vibes this book had with the knitting murder solving aunt. I also thought the concept of uploading memories to a database was really interesting. I’m impressed by how complete the story was and the punch it packed for being so short. Also, cozy sci-fi murder mysteries may be one of my new favorite genres. I read this via audiobook and really enjoyed the narration. Baker did so well in capturing the vibes of this story, and I would recommend experiencing this novella via audiobook.

📖 Am I glad I read it? Well, Olivia Waite has certainly piqued my interest and snared my attention with this blend of sci-fi and noir detective story that is cozy enough to be a fun treat but not so cozy as to veer into twee territory. My favorite parts were, unsurprisingly to me, the world Waite constructed about the generation ship HMS Fairweather, particularly the concept of the memory library and the literal preservation of memory via books, and the memory cocktails. Tons of fun, super interesting, and, delightfully, subtly political.

Narrator Blair Baker was a pleasure to listen to, engaging and animated. Their voice was nicely suited to the character of a nosy, no nonsense auntie mysteriously stuck in a 27-year-old's body and, as a pleasant bonus, made for an amusing portrayal of the Fairweather ship itself.

I can't say that cozy mysteries will ever be my favorite subgenre, and with the book being as short as it is, the likelihood that I would be nail-bitingly engrossed in the mystery itself wasn't particularly high, but here's what I can say: I'm pretty much always down to read something that can be described as sapphic [INSERT DESCRIPTOR HERE] set in space, and I'll be pleased to read the next book in the series. Especially if we get some more action with a certain intriguing, sexy knitter.

📖 Rating: 👍🏼 (liked; 4.25 stars)