Sunday, February 5, 2023

The Stories You Tell

The Stories You Tell (Roxane Weary, #3)The Stories You Tell by Kristen Lepionka
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

When her brother calls her in the middle of the night, Roxane Weary is thrust into a web of mysteries involving a missing girl, a hookup phone app, and lots of people lying about various things.

So a few years ago, my reading time partially dried up and I mostly started reading comics and other things I didn't pay a lot of attention to. Now that my son is older and I don't lose two hours of my life to the commute, I can read actual books again.

Enough about me, though. This is the third Roxane Weary book and it's some good shit. Kristen Lepionka writes a good gritty mystery. I wouldn't exactly call it noir but it's darker than the average mystery. Lepionka has definitely read her Chandler, though.

The mystery isn't really a solvable one, although there are some pretty big hints out there. A one time hookup shows up at Roxane's brother's place and he's quickly in the soup. Roxane pokes around, uncovers a lot of unsavory things, and eventually things are set as right as they're going to get.

Roxane is a great lead character, flawed as hell but still determined. Her relationships with the other characters make this a cut above a lot of books of this type. From her toxic relationship with her girlfriend Catherine to whatever her feelings for Tom, her father's former partner are, to her somewhat motherly role with her teenage neighbors.

I don't know what else to say without giving away too much. There's a lot of catfishing in this so be careful who you're talking to online would be the core lesson of this, if there is one.

Four out of five stars. I'm going to blaze through the second one today pending unforeseen interruptions.

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