Even with upping my challenge and being out of shorter books, I am still doing well on my challenge.

How To Solve Your Own Murder - I picked this up because I am trying to familiarize myself with mysteries and this appears to be the hot, new one. The plot came together very, very well. Towards the end, bits from the start kept occurring to me and made a lot of sense. It was the smoothest modern mystery I'd read.

However, in the home stretch it gets a bad case of sequel-itis. It feels like things are scooped out to set up a series instead. It made the book a lot less satisfying. If this had been a stand alone, I'd read more books by the author. Since the ending was filled with plot hooks and suddenly feeling like two plotlines got dropped, I doubt I will.

Death by Silver and A Death at the Dionysus Club by by Melissa Scott and Amy Griswold - books 1 and 2 of Lynes and Mathey - These are a bit tricky. I liked them. They are listed as m/m mystery books and they are, but I feel like those categories might give people the wrong expectations for the books.

The romance goes from semi-established to somewhat-more-established over the two books. Most of the focus is on slowly revealing who the characters are. That's interesting and I like having room for more types of gay books especially in the genre space. But they fall solidly into the 'I don't know who I'd recc this to or how' category. I am probably not going to read a third book if it happens unless it wraps up the story as a trilogy.

The books are very low-spice and in the first book that suits the vibe. I'd prefer very spicy, but again I like seeing a wider range of what's in the space. In the second book their sexual compatibility, or possible lack of, is such an issue it's kind of odd to not have a bit more insight on how things play out between them.

Some things are very well written: casual intimacy, the effects of being hidden and also having been at boarding school, etc. A lot of the actual writing is very good, but the overall plots feel very flat. So, it's great at setting and characterization and people struggling to communicate, but things don't change much. Some people will vibe with that and some wont. I liked it for one book, but by the end of the second book I was a bit bored of the book holding the same note.