TESSA TALKS BOOKS

Book Blurb

Murder is (literally) not her department, but this grim reaper has to solve one–fast–or her new client won’t be able to move on.

Kathy Valence is forty-two, mid-divorce, and pregnant with her ex’s baby. She’s also a modern-day grim reaper employed by S.C.Y.T.H.E. (Secure Collection, Yielding, and Transportation of Human Essences), but frankly that’s the easiest part of her life right now. Or at least it was, until her latest client’s soul goes missing.

     When she finally tracks down seventeen-year-old Conner Ortiz, he angrily denies he died of natural causes, despite what his file says. He insists that someone at S.C.Y.T.H.E. murdered him, and he demands Kathy find out who and why. 

     Kathy has only forty-five days to figure out what happened to Conner and help him move on before the boy’s soul is doomed to roam the Earth as a ghost forever. She’s forced to rely on the help of her retired mentor, her almost ex-husband—and some sneaky moves by Conner himself. This is the wildest case of her career. . .and one wrong move could cost Kathy her job, not to mention her life.

My Review

Thank you, @berkleypub #berkleypartner , for the free book!

✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨

A Grim Reaper’s Guide to Catching a Killer by Maxie Dara 

• One-word review:  Everything
• Emojis: 🫨🥹🥲🥰
• Rating:  4.5🌟s

Favorite Quote:

“Why do . . . did you love me?” Simon sat back in his chair at that, his hands coming to rest on his stomach. He looked at me for a long moment, as if I’d asked him to explain the formation of the universe. Perhaps loving me was just as puzzling. Finally, he leaned across the table and took my hand. “Because, Kathy Valence, you are worthy of love.”

My Top-Five-style Review:

5. It’s EVERYTHING you could want in a fun paranormal world, with unique and fascinating elements that left me wanting more.  The world-building is so immersive that I lost myself in its intricate details.  I’m left with a few questions, eagerly anticipating their answers in future books.

4.  It’s EVERYTHING you could want in a second-chance romance. The love between Kathy (Grim) and Simon is palpable on every page, making me root for them. If she can admit it and fight for their relationship, all will be right.

3.  It’s EVERYTHING you could want in a found family story. The only thing Conner missed out on in his short life was a real sense of family, and witnessing that thread of the story play out truly touched my heart in the most profound ways, making me feel a part of their journey.

2. It’s EVERYTHING you could want in a cozy mystery. Loads of suspense make the pacing consistently quick throughout the story. The mystery kept me guessing, with plenty of red herrings to distract me.

1. It’s EVERYTHING you could want in a story of any genre.  With characters that come to life right on the page and a whimsical, cozy, suspenseful, mysterious, and poignant tale, I couldn’t have asked for more and hated to leave the story.  When is Book 2 coming out?

About the Author

Maxie Dara is a writer and actor from Ontario, Canada. She has been a freelance journalist focusing on the local arts and culture scene for more than five years, with bylines in publications such as Hamilton Magazine and Beyond James, among others. She is also a two-time award-winning playwright, taking home the Best of Fringe award at the 2017 Hamilton Fringe Festival for the musical comedy This Is Not a Musical: The Musical! and the 2020 Torpedo Prize for her play Alone Together, a pandemic drama. Maxie knew she wanted to be a writer at the age of seven, when she first fell in love with the written word. She also wanted to be a mermaid but has mostly focused on the writing side of things.

Excerpt

438 Melrose Court

I tapped the address in my file with the lid of the pen I’d been chewing on. Beside the front door of the sandy beige new build, swirly metal numerals confirmed my location. Four three eight. Weird. Definitely the right number, but this was all wrong. I turned from the house and glanced down the manicured lawn to the street sign across the road. It promised in no uncertain terms that this was Melrose Court, just as it was supposed to be. I shut my file with a defeated sigh and went back in through the open door a second time.

“Hello?” I called yet again as I stomped through the kitchen. It was a kitchen that belonged on a show about kitchens more than in somebody’s house: clean and white and open-concept, leading out into the high-ceilinged living room beyond. The “after” on a home renovation show. Not even a spoon in the sink or a crumb on the countertops. Which made the body sprawled across the tiled floor look even more out of place.

Now, slap a corpse on the floor of my dingy apartment kitchen and you wouldn’t bat an eye, at least in my line of work. But in a place like this, a dead body really spoils the ambience.

I rounded the island and reopened my file.

Case # 507032

Conner Mateo Ortiz

Age: 17

Cause of death: Seizure

Time to Collect: 4:30 p.m.

“Conner?” My voice ricocheted off the stainless steel and marble surrounding me. I crouched by the body and attempted to hover in a squat, but my left knee protested my weight with a defiant pop, and I wobbled forward. “Nope, nope, nope,” I muttered to myself, “no falling on bodies today. Not after last time.” I lowered myself to my steadily widening bum by 507032’s head. His rich brown locks fell over one closed eye, a spattering of freckles on his nose. I sighed, one hand at my stomach. Poor kid. He looked younger than his age lying there, long lashes pressed above bronze cheeks still full with the last remnants of baby fat. I’d found his basement bedroom not ten minutes earlier; a gallery of posters and mess and potential. It always felt wrong when they were young. Like their bodies should still have some life left in them. But of course, they didn’t. That’s why I was there.

Still, he was going to make me late, and the last man to make me late was the very reason I needed to get back to the office and then on my way home on time.

“Conner?” I tried again. Nothing. The house shuddered at my voice and fell still.

My phone vibrated in my back trouser pocket and I nearly puked, though I wasn’t entirely sure the two were related. I scrambled for the phone and hauled myself to my feet.

Simon. He got the table for six thirty instead of seven. Of course he did. Shit. If we weren’t already in the middle of a divorce, I’d consider filing over this.

This wasn’t the way it normally worked-the way it always worked. Death, for all its unpredictability and unknowns, was remarkably routine on my end. It was one of the things I loved most about my job. Someone under my department’s jurisdiction dies, I get the paperwork, carry out the collection, write up a report for Stu, and am on the couch watching Family Feud with a bowl of canned tomato soup by five thirty. That’s how it was, how it always had been for the six years I’d been a Collections Agent with S.C.Y.T.H.E. But somehow today was different. Case 507032 was different.

I glanced back over the boy. My client files were always pared down to need-to-know information, and in my position, there isn’t much I need to know. But it seemed clear enough from the body-long-limbed and dressed in faded jeans and a gray hoodie-that aside from his family’s apparent wealth, 507032 was your average, unremarkable teenaged boy. So the question was, why wasn’t he here?

I did a second tour through the house, Conner Ortiz’s name bouncing back to me in my own voice from the high ceilings of every starkly furnished room. By the time I’d circled back into the kitchen, it was after five.

“Conner,” I said into the definitively empty house, “I’m sorry.”

I closed my file for the last time and left 438 Melrose Court.

Excerpted from A Grim Reaper’s Guide to Catching a Killer by Maxie Dara Copyright © 2024 by Maxie Dara. Excerpted by permission of Berkley. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.