A review by kitnotmarlowe
Blackmail, My Love: A Murder Mystery by Katie Gilmartin

adventurous dark mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

if i were rating simply the prose, and if every character didn't insist on speaking solely in meandering page-long monologues every single time a piece of I formation needed to be conveyed, i probably would have given this five stars. and if i were rating simply the sections where josie talks about being butch and/or god, then this would be five stars. however a book is more than the best parts of it, and i have to admit that the plot takes a long time to get going and when it was going,it didn't really go anyway. instead it sort of fizzled out without any real tension about who the blackmailer was, aka the thread holding the plot together, until its' rather lackluster reveal. while i enjoyed both the illustrations and the cast of characters, i didn't think the illustrations were completely necessary (though they were lovely) and the characters were so numerous i almost wanted to make a chart like this was a russian novel.

the most absolutely buckwild thing to happen in this book is that there's a shout-out to thee archetypal pulp butch BEEBO BRINKER and i fully left my body laughing