Death of a Bookseller

By: Alice Slater

Narrated by: Rachael Beresford, Sasha Higgins

Roach would rather be listening to the latest episode of her favorite true crime podcast than assisting the boring and predictable customers at her local branch of the bookstore Spines, where she's worked her entire adult life. A serious true crime junkie, Roach looks down her nose at the pumpkin-spice-latte-drinking casual fans who only became interested in the genre once it got trendy. But when Laura, a pretty and charismatic children's bookseller, arrives to help rejuvenate the struggling bookstore branch, Roach recognizes in her an unexpected kindred spirit.

Despite their common interest in true crime, Laura keeps her distance from Roach, resisting the other woman's overtures of friendship. Undeterred, Roach learns everything she can about her new colleague, eventually uncovering Laura's traumatic family history. When Roach realizes that she may have come across her very own true crime story, interest swiftly blooms into a dangerous obsession.

A darkly funny suspense novel, Death of a Bookseller raises ethical questions about the fervor for true crime and how we handle stories that don't belong to us.

©2023 Alice Slater (P)2023 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

Well that was creepy!

I still don’t know yet if Death of a Bookseller was creepy good or creepy bad. I do know it will be living rent free in my head for much too long. Certainly Alice Slater accomplished everything she intended with both of the main characters. Her deft grasp on the threads of trauma and the mental illness that drives character actions is thought provoking. Also, FINALLY there’s a book that calls attention to the way the “true crime” fad has warped reality and pulled attention from the victims in favor of the criminals. Good for Slater!

Blahhhhhhh

Should have been 3hr long at most. Too long with not much happening. Did not need that much back story

Two Stars for The Book Shop Setting & Four for Narration

Spoiler alert…I won’t give away any plot details, but to review and give my opinion properly, I will reveal the one thing that for me made this book a waste of time.

Choose to read on, or not.

I am a murder mystery reader. I do occasionally venture into other genres, but when I choose to spend money on a book titled “Death of a [insert character here], I expect just that…and a mystery at the very least.

Instead, I have just spent money and hours on a tale of two colleagues - one who is bereft of any empathy for others, likely a psychopath, and spends the entire book behaving horribly and driving the other to her wits’ end. Magically, (how??), all’s well that ends well in the last hour, and I realized I had just been conned into wasting time and a credit on a non-mystery that wasn’t even remotely interesting.

I will say that the narration was fine, and that – along with the book shop setting – kept this book from landing firmly in 1-star land for me.

Love how much I hate it.

Two unlikable characters and a plot that often felt like it was going nowhere would normally be a DNF for me. This was a train wreck of a book, and I had to finish it. Huge spoiler: NO ONE DIES. I have no idea what a better title would have been, but do wish that had been spoiled for me so I could manage expectations.

But I am giving it high marks for how intensely it made me feel about these two horrible women.

Wanted to like it, but ugh…

I really wanted to like this book, and I slugged it through to the end. But how can I like a book with such unlikeable characters? The story dragged and I got tired of the pretentiousness of the Laura character and the uber creepiness of the Roach character. Sorry I wasted a credit on this one.

Pass on it

Average story. Slow to get started. Characters have nothing to offer the reader. Also there is a boring fixation on the characters smoking. Endlessly discussing rolling a cigarette, smoking a cigarette or thinking about having a cigarette.

Great

Well written. Well read by different characters. Kept my attention Not what you expect. Great book and reading

Enticing story and fully fleshed out performance

NO SPOILERS
Rarely am I satisfied by the ending of a story, and this novel did it for me. It was a hell of a ride with the creators of this audio book—not just the author but also the narrators. So much so I finished listening to the entire audio book just in two days! As a story, it’s cognizant of the genre and that’s half of the fun. Social commentary and portrayal of the two main characters are spot on.

So dark and so hysterically funny if you have a good, sarcastic sense of humor!

A darkly funny story about a serial killer obsessed bookseller who has a disturbing infatuation with a coworker. Told from the POV’s of both women, the performance on the audiobook is excellent.

Roach thinks she and Laura are going to be great friends when Laura is brought in to help the store to turn a profit. Roach’s interest in true crime is based in entertainment and voyeurism. Laura has a tragic personal reason for finding the crime obsessed offensive. When Laura is cold and unfriendly to her, Roach becomes more and more obsessed and stalkerish. It’s a great slow burn character driven psychological thriller that showcases the obsession with podcasts and all things murder.

“I wonder if serial killers think about me as much as I think about them.” I didn’t realize the actual shirt exists. Go to Etsy. It does! 😂

Pub date: April 25, 2023
Pages: 368

What a great book!!!

Wow, this book really took me by surprise. I loved everything from beginning to the end.