CW: Attempted Sexual Assault, Sexual Assault

The Mystery Writer by Sulari Gentill is a thriller where Theodosia (Theo) Benton quits her law degree to pursue writing a book. After she leaves university, she moves in with her brother Gus, who encourages her to write when she starts to doubt herself about it. He also tells her to get out of the house to write instead of just staying stuck inside, so she decides to go to the bar Benders. This is where she meets Dan, who is an accomplished writer. Once the two start talking, he becomes a mentor for her, teaching her the ins and outs of writing.

The Characters:

Theodosia Benton, also known as Theo, is a 22-year-old who recently quit pursuing her lawyer degree, because she wanted to pursue writing instead.

Dan Murdoch was a famous writer for Day Delos & Associates and the first victim of the book. He hadn’t written a book for a while, but Theo helped him gain inspiration to write one. He was supposedly writing a book based on a conspiracy theory that he saw on a forum.

Gus Benton is the brother of Theo, and is a partner at a law firm. He is protective of Theo and is taking care of a dog called Horse.

Carmac (Mac) Etherbridge is a private investigator and works with Gus’ law firm. His family are all about learning how to survive Doomsday.

Jacqui is the girlfriend of Gus and works at the same law firm he works at. She is not the first girlfriend he has.

Horse is the dog that Gus is taking care of. Theo adores him and likes to call him Horsey. He is a big dog, but could not hurt a thing. He can pretend to be a guard dog as long as he is not expected to attack anyone.

Caleb is someone who chats on the conspiracy forum. He claims himself to be loyal to Primus. Not much is known about Caleb at first other than him being into conspiracy theories.

As Dan and Theo talk more and more at Benders, they become closer. Dan helps Theo the whole way through her first draft of her manuscript. They even get intimate around the time that she finishes her story. She gives the manuscript to Dan for him to read and the next day he is found dead. Her manuscript is gone. She is actually the one that finds the body, which is what starts all the incidents occurring around her.

For everything that Theo has been through, I am surprised that she is still so naive. She doesn’t seem to care to know too much about Dan except for what he teaches her. Dangerous things keep occurring around her, but she will still believe what people tell her. If someone says she is a friend of Dan’s, she believes them. If they say they are a neighbor, she believes them. People may be telling the truth, but there are also plenty of people that are just lying. She just does not believe in stranger danger. This may be to get the plot moving and the twists going, but I cannot believe that she can stay so naive for so long. I guess it’s good she at least has Gus and Mac, but they can’t be there the whole time, which of course is when everything happens.

Incidents keep happening around Theo, and Gus and Mac keep being implicated since they are not around when it happens. Theo tries her best to solve what is going on, but whether it helps or not is questionable. The conspiracy theories do play a pretty major role, and somehow Theo is in the center of everything. It gets even worse for Theo when the publishing company Day Delos & Associates gets a hold of her manuscript and wants to publish her. They have some really weird rules, which should really tell Theo something.

I found this story enjoyable, but I am not sure who I would recommend this to. It has an interesting mystery to it, but with how stupid Theo can be sometimes really made me wonder whether someone can be that innocent. It all just seems a bit unbelievable. I like the writing and some of the characters, but the decisions some of the other characters make were just hard to deal with. And honestly, I could have done without Mac’s family, but I guess they proved useful every now and then. I guess if you like the author, it is worth a chance, but I’m not sure how interested I am in her other works after this one.

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Thanks so much to NetGalley and Redhook Books for access to an eARC in exchange for my honest review!!

what’s it about? ⬇️

When Theo made the decision to leave school in England and follow her brother to America for the chance to finish the novel she's begun writing, the last thing she's expecting is to meet someone--a famous author, no less--and to develop feelings for him. And even more than that, she never would have expected for him to visit one day and find him brutally murdered in his home. Who could have done something like this to such a well-loved author, and why? And why does she keep finding herself wondering if Dan's vehement decision to not share her finished manuscript with his publishing house has something to do with it, especially when more and more people start coming around asking her if she has the missing copy of Dan's final manuscript that he completed just before he died? Can she trust the police to do their due diligence and find the killer and bring justice for Dan's death? And when Theo herself falls deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole of the publishing world's darkest secrets and drags the people she loves most along with her, can she get herself out before it's too late?

my thoughts? ⬇️

This book took me for such a crazy ride. I went in expecting a few twists and turns, for sure, but I had so much fun piecing together the different pieces of the puzzle that Sulari Gentill laid out as the narrative unfolded. The characters were all interesting to read about and had flaws while still being so easy to root for, the tragedy of falling in love and losing that love so quickly at the turning point of the story was heartbreaking and added so much more depth to the rest of the plot, and the romance sub-plot. My god, the romance sub-plot was incredible. I really believed in and rooted for this cast of main characters and loved the forum posts that were added in throughout the story to give the reader a bit more context to try and piece together what was happening alongside Theo and Gus and Mac.

Plus, while the story was obviously sensationalized quite a bit, it had so many important things to say about the publishing industry, other media conglomerates, and the world we live in as a whole and how the things we do and say can and will haunt us for the rest of our lives...unless, of course, we stop living. I would recommend this one for the plot twist alone, seriously. I figured it out a little early just from putting things together and spent the rest of the time until the reveal desperate to see if I was right. I highly recommend going into this one knowing as little as possible about how everything shakes out in the end for the best experience!

trigger warnings ⬇️

death, murder, blood, gun violence, sexual assault, pedophilia, grief, police brutality, alcohol, child abuse, stalking, violence, gaslighting.