ARC Review: The Rich and The Dead by: Liv Spector

The Rich and The Dead by: Liv Spector (Today: March 18, 2014)

320 pages

Genre: Fiction/Mystery/Time Travel

Publisher: William morrow & Company

Source: I received a free ARC from The Publisher for an honest review. Thanks!

Purchase: Barnes and Noble | The Book Depository | Amazon

Goodreads Summary: In exclusive Star Island, Miami, money and power can't protect you... In collaboration with branding powerhouse Alloy Entertainment comes a thrilling new series featuring a former Miami PD detective on the hunt for a mass murderer, who must face the past she thought she left behind.

On New Year's Day 2015, twelve powerful, wealthy people were found dead—shot in a lavish Star Island estate. In 2018, the murderer remains at large.

As a detective and lead investigator on the case of the century, Lila Day was consumed by her hunt for the Star Island Killer. But that was before she was pushed out from the force, and her life unraveled.

Years later, down on her luck and no longer a police officer, Lila is approached by mysterious billionaire Teddy Hawkins. He has a job for her, he says—solving the Star Island murders. Lila laughs. After all, how do you solve a crime when all the leads have long grown cold? The answer, Teddy tells her, is to be there before it happened. He is going to send her back in time.

With nothing left to lose, Lila travels back in time to 2014, determined to stop the Star Island killer once and for all. There's one catch: she must gather the evidence to bring the murderer to justice in her own time, without trying to save anyone. Easy enough, until she starts to care for the people who are destined to die. Now Lila must be willing to say good-bye—or risk setting into motion events that could change the future forever.

My Review

Filled with the rich, the deadly, the powerful, the smart, and the tough, this distinctive novel, The Rich and The Dead, enchanted me from beginning to end. The best way for me to organize and tackle everything I want to say about this novel is for me to just make a list. So here we go.

What I Loved

• The Secret Society: I love secret societies in my novels and this one’s secrets turned out to be perfectly surprising.

• The Characters: The main character, Lila, is a tough woman that I automatically wanted to keep reading about. All of the minor characters from the society and the ones that aren’t from the society all bring the right amount of mystery to the story. I thought it would get annoying to read about rich people, (since I am anything but and mostly they are portrayed as snotty/annoying) but it turned out to be interesting.

• The Writing: The author, Spector, did a great job at telling the story in a simple way at a quick pace, making it easy to follow along and an enjoyable way to relax. (I don't know if this made a difference but for full disclosure, the last book I read was way more complex which may be why I enjoyed that this book was more simple and straight forward in its story telling.)

• The Fast Paced Ending: Although I have a love/hate relationship with the ending of this book, it managed to keep me on the edge of my seat, wasn’t completely predictable, and  managed to bring out a lot of feelings in me. I could feel the clock ticking down to the murders and Lila's race against time.

What Wasn’t My Favorite

• The Time Travel: I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t love it. It was simple and basic, which was nice because it was easy to follow, but lost some points because it wasn’t really unique and I would have liked for it to pop up a little more throughout the story. I didn’t mind that the story was basically a mystery about a detective trying to find evidence of who killed the members of this very secret society, but I would have liked the idea of time travel to pop up just a little bit more. It was basically just at the beginning and the end of the novel.

• The Cover: Even though I like the cover, I feel like the colors are off.

Bottom Line: Read It

Take a chance on The Rich and The Dead. Go in expecting more of a mystery than a time travel novel and enjoy the romance, the complex characters, and the quick fun read that The Rich and The Dead delivers. When it comes down to it, this novel is perfect for those who like murder among the rich and how everyone is full of secrets. It’s a darn good book.