Microphones and Murders Review

    It's time for another ARC review. I did receive this book via Edelweiss, so shout out to them, but this is a cozy mystery centered around two sisters creating a true-crime podcast. There is representation for those that are hard of hearing since there is a character who is now completely deaf (I don't know how well this is done because I do not fit into this demographic and to my knowledge, this isn't own voices for it). But the book is about Liv Olson who used to work as a sound engineer in the #1 podcast series in the country, but now has given up that job to start her own podcast with her younger stepsister, Camry, called Missing or Murdered and the first season is surrounding the disappearance of Amelia Clark, a young woman who went missing after a Youtube video of her went viral that wasn't the most flattering. So Liv and Camry decide to head to Santa Maria to investigate.

   Oh my gosh, is this so lighthearted and fun. It's very much a stereotypical cozy mystery so go into this book with that in mind, because I went into it thinking it was just a thriller and I was a bit let down, but that's on me and not the book's fault. This book is very much written more like a behind the scenes style book than something Sadie, where we get transcripts of the podcast, which I would have liked to see, but it makes it seemed more like you're on the journey with them rather than separate.

 Now, let's talk about the actual case itself, don't worry I won't try to spoil anything but if I do, it'll be minor spoilers. This might be a minor spoiler, but I am so glad that technically there are no wild card guilty parties in this because nothing is more annoying than someone never introduced is suddenly the killer. Honestly, you can go and reread the book to see what hints were given that maybe you glossed over. Also, there is a rather large cast of characters and so the whodunit aspect doesn't seem too narrow, however, there doesn't seem to be too much diversity in this cast. I think the only person of color was Camry who was half-white, half-African American, but I didn't even remember that until I was looking back through the book for this review. I don't remember anyone being on the LGBT spectrum, and like I said prior, there is a deaf character, but I think that's it for diversity. There is at least one more book in the series and hopefully, we will get more diversity there.

All in all, I gave the book 4/5 stars on Goodreads and I would highly recommend this book. It was super fun and enjoyable, some things can be improved and maybe they do, like I said I got an ARC so not 100% sure. The book comes out tomorrow, March 11, according to Goodreads but it seems like you can buy the ebook on Kindle now.