Death of A Dancing Queen

 Hi, I received an Arc of Death of a Dancing Queen from Netgalley. These are my honest thoughts and opinions. 

Billie Levine is juggling the care of a mother, Shari, with early-onset Alzheimer and being a PI under the supervision of her grandfather. Her brother struggles with mental-health issues, but is in a good place at the moment. While the family is buckling under the strain of caring for Shari, they're also struggling financially. 

Billie is hired to find a client's missing girlfriend, Jasmine Flores, and this becomes – shocker – a murder investigation. We're also introduced to a second mystery involving a case Jasmine, a true crime fan and podcaster, was obsessed with. 

While investigating, Billie interacts with wealth, privilege, organized and unorganized crime, racism, bigotry, and an ex included in the organized crime category. Some trusted people turn out to be unworthy of the trust. 

While I loved certain aspects of this story, and definitely want to check in with Billie Levine going forward, this didn't rise to the level of great or classic for me. If you're looking for a mystery with a strong sense of family and community that very well could to be a gateway to a series that promises to be amazing, I recommend this book. 

I'm 16 books into another series where I had very similar feelings about the first book, and now I'm obsessed and it's my favorite series of all time, and I feel we're in similar territory here – where the series needs time to expand of the world, characters, and themes. 

Billie is a terrific character, and so relatable. Her mother's decline constantly preys on her in not just the slow losing of a beloved parent, but what it might mean for her own future. She's a clever, independent woman who feels those qualities might come with a not-t00-distant expiration date. There's a constant low hum of her making decisions based on what she thinks might help her avoid this fate. Billie and Meredith Grey would have a lot to say to each other. 

I know there are other Jewish heroines in modern fiction, but I love this portion of her character, how it grounds her, and the dimension it adds to how she navigates the world. And how these characters respond to her. Needless to say, expect moments of overt antisemitism and microaggressions. 

Dancing Queen also contains multiple examples of LGBTQIA+ representation, as well as POC rep. I support all of this, but want to mention that in the former category, there was a variation of a line repeated twice that wasn't ideal for me. HOWEVER, this was an advanced reader/reviewer copy, which means nothing was set in stone and it was still in the editing process. The line that bugged me, which wasn't intentionally harmful to begin with, very well might no longer exist. If it does, and if it's not me being nitpicky, is for future readers/reviewers to mention. 

With all that I loved, I have to ask myself why I didn't love the entirety more. I think it was the actual mystery/mysteries, where I struggled to keep the characters straight. Billie would recall something that had happened earlier in the book, and I'd have to go back and verify the event had happened. A character would be mentioned by name once early on, and then again late in the story, and I'd have to do a Kindle search to tweak my memory. In a print version, I might have been lost. There was also a thing, that very well might be corrected in the final, where a character had only been known my initials, but then their name was used and everyone acted like they already knew it. 

Both mysteries – Jasmine, and Starla, whose case interested Jasmine – improved for me toward the end. I particularly liked the revelations in the Starla case. There's a part of me that wishes the story had been more about Starla.

Billie goes through a lot in this book, both at home and one the case. She witnesses an act of self-harm involving a gun that's very tough to contemplate. While it's not graphic, the author definitely paints a picture for your mind to fill in some blanks. Please be careful if this is a tough area for you. 

My goal in doing reviews is to (hopefully thoughtfully) discuss books. Reviewing is subjective, and my like of this book, might be love for the book when you read it, and if my review helps you find that beloved book, I'm thrilled. I'm definitely planning to follow this series, which I hope has a good, long run!