Max Wirestone

I received an e-arc of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. This did not affect my opinion of the book in any way.

This book was incredibly funny! I loved Dahlia from the very beginning: she is smart and sarcastic just to the right point. Ok, so admittedly she has some issues: moping over her cheating ex-boyfriend, Dahlia has become totally isolated from all of her former friends and to top it all off has been unemployed for a very long time. In this, Dahlia is a somewhat exaggerated version of your average young adult in a big city: who hasn't endured the seemingly-never-ending pain of fruitless job interviews and non-existent personal life while your former classmates get married and promoted all around you? Of course, it rarely gets as bad as Dahlia has it.

The plot is nothing too original, in that it's your average cozy mystery: Dahlia gets hired by a rich eccentric to solve a digital theft in the world of Zoth, only to find out a few days later that her new employer has been murdered with the exact replica of the item she was hired to recover. A series of unfortunate decisions bring Dahlia ever closer to finding the thief - and unmasking a killer in the process. All the while, trying to stay alive of course.

If the mystery itself isn't anything new, the execution is what made this book a delight to read. I really couldn't stop giggling by myself while reading, and a few times I couldn't help but outright laugh at loud at the witty banter and sarcasm that Dahlia never fails to employ. And she doesn't do it alone: the rest of the cast is just as colourful and funny as our lead, and the absurdity of the situations they end up living really made this book a bright spot in a n incredibly busy week.

If you're looking for an intelligent and funny read, then look no further! The Unfortunate Decisions of Dahlia Moss is just what you need to unwind and relax after a long day, to bring sunshine to a dark day, to make you look like a mad person if you're reading it in public, or even if you need some handy tips on starting your own detective business. Although I wouldn't necessarily recommend starting out with a dead client... but then again, it worked for Dahlia Moss!… (mehr)

Dahlia Moss is billed as WOW meets Veronica Mars, and honestly, that's pretty apt, sans the hard exterior. I found the fast-paced mystery enjoyable. Wirestone is heavy on the allusions -- I can imagine the book is almost illegible to people who aren't part of at least one fandom -- but he draws from a pretty diverse pool, so it's not like you have to specifically play MMORPGs to find it enjoyable. Besides the general geekery, I found the mystery well-built, with some nice clues, some nice distractors and overall good pacing. The characters were all pretty shallowly depicted, but each was quirky and fun.

I thought where the story showed some depth was in exploring the ways in which Dahlia had separated herself off from a social life when life didn't turn out how she planned, and how she managed to find her way back to having friends and accepting herself how she was. I think it's a pretty universal story of the mid-20's and this is one of the most honest depictions I've seen.

It's imperfect: some of the allusions felt a little forced and the witty repartee felt a little on the nose, but overall, I found it a completely enjoyable, fast romp (I read nearly the entire thing over the course of a 90 minute flight) and I'll probably read the next books in the series.… (mehr)