The Disaster Gay Detective Agency by Lev A.C. Rosen
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I picked up this book because of the title and the cover. It promised quirkiness and laughs, two things I enjoy in my stories so I had high hopes for it.
Unfortunately it didn’t quite reach my expectations.
The positive: it is definitely quirky with a group of mostly likable–if rather improbable–characters, all quirky in some way. It dealt with a long term friendship and the theme of how adult life sometimes keeps you away from the things you really love and people you care about. It did deliver some laughs, and I enjoyed the multiple POVs throughout the plot.
The use of texts as part of the story fit well with the age of the characters and at times added to the development of the plot.
It touched very briefly and very vaguely on some traumatic events and how they affected some of the main characters (spoiler alert: a near-rape, the violent death of a parent, a betrayal) which in theory should have brought more depth to the characters’ personalities but I fear it fell a bit flat.
It was an easy and quick read despite its 384 pages and all in all I had a good time reading it, but it is not a story that will stick with me for a long time.
The negative: I couldn’t fully “like” the characters. They all seemed to lack the ambition to better themselves. I love underdogs but these ones just seem to like to complain but do nothing to help themselves. I thought they would kind of have a come-to-Jesus moment at the end, but they really didn’t and nothing much changed for them (their own fault).
The use of very long word-for-word repetition of dialogue shared between the characters as a way of setting the timeline for each of the POVs was a huge mistake. I get what the author was trying to do but after I read the same thing twice and came across it again, I started skimming and I probably ended up missing important bits that Rosen inserted in between.
One massive oops happened toward the end when the US marshal allows a criminal (I won’t say who so not to spoil it) to go scotch free after witnessing their guilt up close and personal. One of the editors should have caught that.
When it comes down to it, I was just disappointed with the lack of growth of the characters. I had no problem with them being underperforming members of society but I did have a major issue with the lack of willingness to try to get themselves out of the hole they were in. In fact, it seemed that as the story progressed they dug themselves into a bigger one.
It’s not a bad story, it’s just not a great one if that makes any sense.
Author Natalina Reis 