I was in a sorority in college and so this book really appealed to me. I’ve read a few books by this author in the past and have really enjoyed her writing and decided to take a chance on this new one. Although I had a couple of issues with the book, as a whole I thought it was totally worth reading.
The Sorority Murder releases December 28, 2021, MIRA Publishing
I voluntarily reviewed a complimentary copy of this book, all opinions are my own. This post contains affiliate links, see disclosures for more detail.
About the Book:
New York Times bestselling author Allison Brennan’s suspenseful new mass market original about a college senior’s podcast that delves into an unsolved campus murder of a sorority girl three years earlier, as individual callers explode every fact previously thought to be true.
Lucas Vega is obsessed with the death of Candace Swain, who left a sorority party one night and never came back. Her body was found two weeks later, and the case has grown cold. Three years later while interning at the Medical Examiner’s, Lucas discovers new information, but the police are not interested.
Lucas knows he has several credible pieces of the puzzle, he just isn’t sure how they fit together. So he creates a podcast to revisit Candace’s last hours. He asks listeners to crowdsource what they remember and invites guest lecturer, former US Marshal Regan Merritt, to come on and share her expertise.
New tips come in that convince Lucas and Regan they are onto something. Then shockingly one of the podcast callers turns up dead. Another hints at Candace’s secret life…a much darker picture than Lucas imagined—and one that implicates other sorority sisters. Regan uses her own resources to bolster their theory and learns that Lucas is hiding his own dark secret. The pressure is to solve the murder, but first Lucas must come clean about his real motives in pursuing this podcast – before the killer silences him forever.
My Thoughts:
I gave this book 3.5 stars
This is a creative mystery with some good points and a few shortcomings, but the good outweighs the bad overall.
The Good
The main premise of this book is that college student Lucas Vega has started a podcast in order to find more information and possibly solve the disappearance and then murder of Candace Swain three years previously. Candace was a senior nursing student at Northern Arizona University when Lucas was a freshman, and she disappeared after a sorority party and was found dead a week later. The podcast angle is fresh and interesting and done well in the story.
Regan Merritt, a former US Marshal, home visiting her father in Flagstaff after some devastating personal issues, volunteers as a guest expert on the podcast. She then gets invested in helping Lucas to find out what happened to Candace. I loved her as a character and she added some depth and maturity that the storyline really needed.
Overall the mystery works, it’s a bit unbelievable at the end, but for the most part the story kept me interested and wanting to discover the answers. Once the pacing picks up (see below) the book moves rapidly to an exciting conclusion.
The Not-So-Good
The book takes forever to get going. It felt like we were spinning in circles because we went over the same evidence over and over (and over) with each new character’s addition, and then Lucas rehashes the same evidence on his podcast. The repetition was grating after a while and threw the pacing completely off. Once things actually start to occur in real time (rather than just Lucas talking about what he knows) and people start coming forward with more clues and information, the pace picks up rapidly and the book becomes much more interesting.
Lucas was difficult for me to like for quite a long time. I knew he must be hiding something from Regan, but in general he acted like a high school student instead of a college student with some of his antics and ways he was speaking. I wish the author would have made him more intelligent and less hysterical.
**WHY oh why do these authors insist on having characters with similar names? In this book we have Rachel and Regan. Argh, it was difficult to keep them straight sometimes, I had to go back and re-read certain sections to figure out who was in the scene. ** There are a MILLION names out there, why pick ones that are SO similar?
Overall, this is an engaging mystery if you realize that the beginning is going to be a bit slow. I really hope Brennan brings Regan back in the future, she’s a complex character with a lot to add to mystery investigations.
About the Author:
ALLISON BRENNAN is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of over thirty novels. She has been nominated for Best Paperback Original Thriller by International Thriller Writers and the Daphne du Maurier Award. A former consultant in the California State Legislature, Allison lives in Arizona with her husband, five kids and assorted pets. The Sorority Murder is the first of a new mass market series,
Social Links:
Author website: https://www.allisonbrennan.com/
Facebook: @AllisonBrennan
Twitter: @Allison_Brennan
Instagram: @abwrites
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/52527.Allison_Brennan
