Death at the Door

[cornerofmadness]

Death at the Door by Olivia Blacke

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


A 3.5 star read if I'm honest because Ruby is...young? That sounds better than makes stupid decisions right? Because whoo boy there were times I was hoping Cordelia would slap her into next week. I did not get to see book one but the gist is obvious. Ruby has come to Boston to get away from a bad break up with a fresh start in a new city and is working as the receptionist for TrendCelerate a tech company that Cordelia used to work at, the same Cordelia whose apartment and all her earthy belongings Ruby now has. In theory Cordelia committed suicide (fully dressed in the bath with pills that weren't hers) and her ghost is looking out for Ruby.

Then the unthinkable happens during Ruby's bosses' meeting with their competitor CloudIndus, Marty the spuckie delivery dude is found dead (by Ruby) in the bathroom a handful of pills jammed into his throat. Naturally Ruby and Cordelia (who mostly communicates with Ruby via fridge magnets and an etch-a-sketch) feel they must solve the case and oddly enough after the beginning interviews the police pretty much disappear from the narrative.

Cordelia, being older, seems to have the more level headed and she's the one who gathers more of the clues and red herrings that the reader can use and she has no good way of giving them to Ruby. Into all this come two men: Tosh the new next door neighbor who obvious to everyone but Ruby is being nice to her for underhanded reasons and Ian, Cordelia's often incarcerated younger brother who breaks into Ruby's place a few too many times without her reporting him to the police.

There are plenty of people who might have wanted Marty dead, especially since he was a small time drug dealer (to a lot of Ruby's coworkers) and there is industrial espionage going on and just what was on the encrypted flashdrive Ruby found?

The mystery winds up well enough though with more loose threads than I'm used to (points to Tosh, the flashdrive and the drug kingpin) including an open ending involving Cordelia's brother.

I liked Cordelia better than Ruby. I think some of my dissatisfaction with Ruby comes from how she handles some things, like her interrogation of Marty's sister the day after his death along with some of her choices (where I'm forcibly reminding myself she's not even 21 yet so let's call it inexperience) But what really burned me was something Cordelia did with something (I don't want to spoil it) electronic knowing she destroys them. I'd rather that scene hadn't happened at all. There is also a lot of repetition in some things like Cordelia and Adam, how much of a loser Cordelia and Ian were in life among others. It wasn't a bad book by any means but there were some things that hit me wrong. I would read more of the series though.





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