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New York City can feel like its own country—its bustling city streets, its unique neighborhoods. In Killer Content, the first Brooklyn Murder Mystery by author Olivia Blacke, a sweet girl from the South shows up in the Big Apple and ends up caught up in a mystery.
The story settles into the trendy Brooklyn neighborhood of Williamsburg, where Louisiana native Odessa Dean is house sitting while her aunt is traveling. It didn’t take long for Odessa to realize that life in Brooklyn isn’t cheap, so she’s taken a job as a waitress at Untapped Books & Café. When one of her coworkers suddenly leaves work in the middle of her shift, only to wind up dead in a nearby park, Odessa isn’t convinced that it was just an accident. And while everyone tells her to leave it alone, she can’t help but search for answers to what really happened to Bethany.
Since this is the first book in a new series, it’s clear that the author is still working on settling in. There’s so much to love about this cozy series: a hip neighborhood in the big city, a fish-out-of-water character who’s surrounded by new friends and coworkers, and the potential for plenty of adventures and laughs.
This first installment shows hints of things to come, though none of it is quite solidified yet. Odessa is sweet and likable with plenty of Southern charm, though her slang-filled vocabulary makes her feel less like a small-town girl from the bayou and more like a TikTok-obsessed teenager. The characters around her show plenty of promise, though only her new friend Izzy lets her personality shine through here. And while Odessa’s story is supposed to have a social media twist—since she’s brought in to handle the café’s social media accounts after Bethany’s death—that aspect isn’t strong enough to justify the overall theme of the series.
Still, the twists and turns of the mystery take Odessa on some interesting adventures through Brooklyn. And though the author may not have found her stride yet, there’s something here that suggests that this will become a fun cozy mystery series.
With its hip urban setting, its likable characters, and its sense of humor, Killer Content is a light and entertaining introduction to a new mystery series. It may not be especially memorable, but it shows a lot of promise for quirky adventures to come.
Listen to the review on Shelf Discovery:
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