Review: Drop Dead

Drop Dead by Lily Chu
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Three and a half stars.

Nadine Barbault and Wes Chen were on the same journalism course at college, always rivals for everything, but somewhere along the way the competitiveness tuned bad.

Nadine works for the Toronto Herald, she was on the politics desk until a reader objected to some of her articles, sent her abusive and violent messages and crowned it all by turning up at her apartment. After that, although the paper was (sort of) supportive, she moved to the recently vacated role of Obituaries Editor until one night, in her eagerness to be the first paper to publish the news, she ran the obituary of Dot Voline, a world-famous author, only to later discover the news of her death was, as they say, greatly exaggerated.

Wes works for the Spear, an online newspaper. He really wants to be on the Investigations desk, but after a six month internship he was transferred to the Sunday supplement style desk. His transfer may be because the online newspaper is losing money and his writing gets the most attention. When glorying in Nadine's error, he notices a comment online which references a past scandal involving Dot and decides to follow up in person with the elusive author. Nadine has seen the same comment (before the obituary was removed from the website) and has the same idea.

Although Dot initially refuses to speak to either of them, they eventually win her over - but she will only tell her story to the two of them together - they are going to have to collaborate to break the story. Week after week they visit her OTT mansion, getting ever closer to discovering what the scandal was about, but when Dot dies unexpectedly it seems the story might die with her, until her heir offers them three weeks to search for evidence/clues.

Of course, as they search the mansion the enforced proximity forces the two of them to look beyond their rivalry and discover they have more in common than they thought. But when they uncover a decades old scandal will they fight to break the story?

After a slow start this was a fun read, sweet, funny, full of cats, secret basements, and hidden rooms.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley.

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