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I Need You to Read This by Jessa Maxwell

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

For me it was a 3.5 read but I rounded up. Oddly enough, this is the second mystery with an advice columnist as the amateur sleuth (they're at least 150 years apart in timeline). Alex Marks is annoyed to find the newspaper is running an ad to replace Francis Keen as Dear Constance, an advice columnist.

Francis was murdered at her beach house about a year ago. Alex thinks no one can replace her and more or less rage-applies for the job and gets it. Now she's working for her dream editor, a pulitzer prize winner whose personal assistant seems to take an instant dislike to Alex. As for Alex, she's fearful when her picture is run in the paper as the new Dear Constance which is a big red flag she's hiding from someone and I assume it's an ex lover (and that made me wonder why she didn't tell them not to run her picture. You can do that which is what one of my coworkers had to do so her stalker ex wouldn't be able to find her)

Francis worked in the old part of the building and for some reason they put her in that office without even cleaning Francis' stuff out which struck me as dumb (and too much of a plot contrivance) Francis' personal assistant, the girl who works in the mail room and helps Francis sort all the letters seems deathly afraid of the editor and avoids him at all cost.

All of these red flags make Alex's two friends at the diner nervous, one is a former detective and the diner server. Added into this mix is a would-be boyfriend for Alex. These friends agree with Alex something hinky is going on and decide they need to solve Francis' murder especially because the former detective knows the current one is not good at his job.

We also get a running interlude of Lost Girl's letters to Constance that we're not sure if Francis saw these letters. Are they to put us on edge about Alex's would be boyfriend? Who wrote them (Figured that out half way through)

There were things that made me eye roll though, like the above mentioned office thing. I mean the pictures are still there? (because they play a role in solving this mystery), the idea that there are still mountains of paper mail letters instead of emails (though I will buy if you wanted an abusive partner to not know about it, that would leave less of a trail) and the salary they offered seemed ridiculously high in this day and age for a physical newspaper.

Lastly the whole subplot with the former detective seemed completely unnecessary (unless this is planned as a series and it's needed for later) and just took me out of the story. It was obviously not meant as a red herring.

Overall though I did like it. What I loved, however, was the cover. It's not a pretty one by any means but it had a cool effect. The red is slick and the typewriter keys are rough, giving it a tactile sensation and that was neat.

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