Book 7, 2023
Losing Your Head by Clare Kauter
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Last night I finished the ebook Losing Your Head by Clare Kauter. It's the first book in the "Charlie Davies" cozy mystery series. I'd read a holiday novella in that verse in December and enjoyed it enough to seek out more. The main character is Charlotte 'Charlie' Davies, a sarcastic, antisocial check-out girl who lands a job as a receptionist at a prestigious PI firm.
After getting fired from her soul-sucking job at the local grocery store, Charlie is actually relieved. That is, until she realizes that without a job she'll never be able to move out of her parents' home. She inadvertently and miraculously lands a decent job as a receptionist at Baxter & Co, a PI firm. When her nemesis, James McKenzie is accused of murdering his billionaire uncle, Charlie bets him that she can prove he didn't do it. At least, she doesn't think he did it. Now, along with learning the ropes at her new job and getting acclimated to it, she's trying to figure out how to find out who really murdered Frank McKenzie. It becomes a toss-up as to which will happen first: will the murderer kill Charlie, or will Charlie kill James?
This book was laugh out loud funny. What a riot! Charlie is irreverent, sarcastic, and an utter klutz. The one thing that bothered me was her age. I was taken aback to learn she's only 19. It didn't detract from my enjoyment, but it did cause me to raise my brows. The story verged on being crack, considering some of the situations Charlie got herself into, but I just hung on for the ride and laughed my way through it.
Favorite lines:
♦ This job sucked harder than a vacuum cleaner.
♦ You may think it was rude of me not to listen to the customer, and you're right. It was rude. I was rude.
♦ If you were going to cheat on a woman, surely it wasn't the brightest idea to gift her with the means of disposing of your corpse.
♦ Her two favorite hobbies were cooking and gardening, although I suspect that was at least partly because she liked to make sure her upper body was properly toned from shovelling and whisking so she could win a fist-fight at a moment's notice.
♦ "I think we will need to address the fact that Dad has taken far more than his fair share of baked potatoes." I’m Irish; I understand this completely.
♦ "At least I can grow chest hair." There’s no context here, but trust me, this line had me howling with laughter!
♦ "Regretting some decisions you made yesterday?" // "Not as much as your mum regretted blah blah, insult about you being born."
♦ I hate my alarm clock. It was always rejoicing in my misery, beeping cheerily at me when all I wanted to do was sleep.
♦ I wanted a big, fatty fry-up for breakfast, not health food. I ended up getting scrambled tofu, mushrooms and rye bread with a side of my own tears.
♦ “She’s already sucked ninety percent of the joy out of us. Don’t let her take our souls completely.”
♦ “I think they might object to us consuming the crime scene.”
Fast-paced, fun, and zany! Will certainly look for more of this series. Five stars.