Murder of Crows - K. Ancrum

Initial Draw: ☆☆☆
Character Development: ☆☆
Plot/Writing Style: ☆☆

Overall: ⭐⭐

From the cover:

"When Tig Torres first moved back to her hometown of Hollow Falls, she solved the infamous Lit Killer case - and cleared her late Aunt Beth's name in the process.

Tig's work on the case brought her to the attention of Hollow Falls's local armchair detective group, the Murder of Crows. The eccentric group is obsessed with their town's dark past - but their interests extend far beyond the Lit Killer.

Members of the group are fixated on a decades-long search for the missing body of Hollow Falls's founder. There are rumors about what's buried with the body that could be life-changing for whoever finds it. With a mission like that underway, it's not long before a member of the Murder of Crows turns up dead.

Soon, Tig and her friends Max and Wyn are tangled up in the search, too. But the stakes are getting higher and the hunt more dangerous. Someone's willing to kill to keep the town's secrets buried, and if Tig's not careful, she'll be the next victim."

📚📚📚 

Look, if you already read my mystery read post about this book, you know I wasn't impressed by it at the start. I decided to really give it a fair shake, I had to read the whole thing and see how everything played out. It wasn't worth it.

I would say "bypassing the decision to write a book as a 'sequel' to a podcast" but truthfully, I don't think you can. Do I think technically you can read this book without the podcast context and have it stand alone? Yes. In practice, however, there's not a lot of world or character development in the book, and the narrative throughout leaned pretty heavily on the reader having the information from the podcast. It's almost a fan fiction vibe, like this was written exclusively for fans of the Lethal Lit podcast to enjoy.

Let's pass beyond the weird choice to write a book billed as the first in a series that actually requires knowledge from another form of media to really follow, though. Tig and her friends - good characters? Eh. They weren't BAD, I guess, but they all just felt very flat and inconsistent. As noted, it seems like a lot of their development happened in the podcast, but if you're going to write a book set in an existing world, sorry, I think it's still your responsibility to develop that shit yourself. 

Also, for all that Tig was touted as this great detective and the solver of this notorious serial killer case (which, also, so weird they were all super flippant about that), she didn't really seem to solve anything in this book. It was more like she and her friends were like "oh my god, what's happening, we have to figure this out" and then someone else would be like "psst, come over here, I have so much lore to share with you" and they would just straight up spoon feed them answers. The entire book was just Tig tripping from one dumb scenario to another and making arguably the worst decisions possible along the way.

Full spoilers here - even the end was a complete letdown. First of all, continuing the tripping from one scenario to another theme, Tig et al didn't even DO anything to solve what was happening or stop the bad guy from carrying out his evil plot. They thought it was someone else and yelled at that character on the phone, and then that character TOLD them who it really was and they ran headlong into danger with no plan and basically just submitted themselves to that person. Then that person got THEMSELVES killed while Tig and the gang just fucking sat there. But hey, in a not at all earned dramatic scene, Tig almost died in a fire, so there's that.

And after that, when Tig & co. miraculously solved the impossible riddles of this decades-old hidden "scavenger hunt" for the Founder's treasure (that were not impossible and also just straight up made no fucking sense and the whole thing was never explained in a satisfactory way to justify the hullaballoo behind it all), the treasure was a. in a place that would have been incredibly easy to find and b. basically nothing. And then it was just like "cool, well, the end. But PS don't forget, this town is crazy dangerous and everyone is violent and scary, dun dun duuuuuun."

Like I said, impossible to say "aside from the questionable premise of writing a book based on a podcast world," but even if I was willing to, I don't think this is a well-told story. And being very honest, I have my doubts that the podcast is any better. I'm just glad the book is relatively short, so it didn't take me long to read.