Disappointed by this book, it seems like every geeky obsession is mashed into the book, comic con, renaissance festival, online gaming, but they are all just mentioned or are background scenes for the novels action no real flavor. That and I found all of the characters either unlikable or boring. Not really sure why I bothered to finish it.
The smart geek girl was fooled by the person she spent the most amount of time with, her work subordinate Warren. Who talked his way into her house, drugged her before she started to suspect him, then blabbed away confessing all of his crimes. Then she had to be saved, not the type of heroine I was hoping for. ( )

This was a great new author for me to read. The main character, Mia Conners, is a wealthy computer IT geek, with a family that is very into Renaissance Faires. Mia is not very socially adept and tends to be as brash and outspoken as she is sarcastically funny. A perfect character in my book! She works as the computer guru for Horseshoe Falls, a wealthy gated community in Ohio near Akron. She, however, lives in an unpretentious small condo in the downtown of a city ( unspecified). Things were not well at work. When she arrives one morning, a huge pickup is parked in her parking space, there's a new temporary head of security, and someone has hacked into the community's computer network. The hack has creating a big headache as it sent out all sorts of free coupons for the clubhouse businesses, as well as automatically setting up bogus appointments at various other businesses. The community members were having a fit. Then, worst of all, that very evening Mia finds one of her best friends slumped dead over her computer. It was a very fun light read. ( )

Starting it today. It's been a tough week, I need some fluffy read. And if the heroine is an IT girl, even better.

In my mind, I can only see Ms. Felicity Smoak.


( )

There were aspects of this I liked, but now I've finished it I struggle to recall what they were. Mia isn't a bad main character, but she's just abrasive enough to make her hard to like. Jake is an alpha-hole who never does anything to redeem Mia's initial impression of him as entitled, but somehow it happens. There's never any real chemistry between them, which makes the slow burning romance fall quite flat.

I'd hoped the romance would save the mystery, then I hoped the mystery would save the romance, and neither worked. The culprit is not only a character so obvious I assumed he'd already been ruled out for some reason, and his motivation is dismissed by the main characters in a way that completely undermines the whole plot.

Worst, though, is the fact that as part of the revelation that he's a villain, it's suddenly revealed (to the other characters, as well as to the reader) that he's hispanic. There's no reason why - it's not like there's been mystery phone calls by someone with a hispanic accent that they hadn't realised was him, there's no messages scrawled on the wall with Spanish-style syntax, there is literally no reason to suddenly reveal he's hispanic except because it apparently makes him more villainous. It's really hard to think of a non-racist reason to do so, and after slogging through the book to this point, it made me really regret the hours I'd spent on it. ( )

I received a complimentary copy of this book from the Publisher via NetGalley as a part of a book tour for a fair and honest review. I rated it 4.5 out of 5 Stars.

A fun, lighthearted cozy, A Geek Girl’s Guide to Murder by Julie Anne Lindsey is one of those books you pick up thinking you’ll read for an hour or two and then suddenly realize it is 2am and you have to go to sleep. A quirky crime solver, a handsome “law officer” and an interesting mystery set in a gated community grabbed my attention from the first page and never let go. Proving pretty girls can be smart, tech savvy and drive cars named “Stella”, Ms. Lindsey’s story is a great start for her Geek Girl Mystery series.

A single woman nearing thirty years old, Mia Connors is a very likable character. Smart, dedicated to her family and in love with girly vintage fashion, she’s the IT manager for a gated community named Horseshoe Falls. A self-professed “Geek Girl”, Mia loves her job, using social media and enjoys attending Renaissance Faires. Ms. Lindsey did a really good job introducing Mia’s character and developing her as the story progressed, I liked her from the start and found it easy to connect with her. While she’s great in a lot of ways, I liked the fact she had some “quirks”; even though she’s in management and gets along well with her family, she’s socially awkward, has less than a handful of friends and doesn’t date because it’s never worked out well for her. Yet, she’s completely lovable if you are willing to overlook her faults.

The secondary characters are also well developed and I really liked “Jake Archer”, the new head of security at Horseshoe Falls. He’s tall, smoking hot and for some reason is watching Mia as if she’s a criminal in the making. I also enjoyed getting to meet Mia’s two “best friends” and her family, who are very colorful and contributed a lot of comedy to the story. When the computer network at Horseshoe Falls is “hacked” and residents start getting emails Mia never sent, she finds herself trying to solve a mystery and finding a dead body.

The mystery portion of the book is well developed and takes quite a few twists and turns. I was really surprised how well the mystery was tied into Mia’s IT job and with the gated community in general. An added bonus is that the mystery brings Jake and Mia together and while she tries to prove she’s innocent of any wrong doing, the chemistry between them really heats up. Even though I had a suspicion about the villain’s identity, Ms. Lindsey takes the reader on a pretty good chase and the revelation at the end was very well done. The motive was a complete surprise too!

Will Mia and Jake figure out who killed Mia’s friend and why they did it in her office? Will their smoldering attraction lead to more than a working relationship? You’ll have to read A Geek Girl’s Guide to Murder to find out. I loved it and can’t wait to read the next book in this series. ( )