A Killer Kind of Romance

Lorini (Desserts for Stressed People) delights with this suspenseful contemporary. When popular crime fiction podcaster Scarlett Moore is recruited by her boss, Celeste, to take over a romance podcast from a colleague who’s leaving, her knee-jerk response is no because she doesn’t read the genre—until she remembers that she has a mortgage to pay. While attending a “single mingle” event at a friend’s behest, Scarlett reconnects with the boy next door and her longtime crush, the mysterious Rafael Gray, who left town under suspicious circumstances five years earlier. Soon after his return, someone starts using Scarlett’s on-air mystery recommendations as inspiration for real-life murders, leading Scarlett to investigate. Along the way, she’s repeatedly thrown back together with Rafael, and the pair fall in love, though Scarlett still has no idea why he left town or what he does for a living. Lorini does a good job planting red herrings and making everyone a suspect on the way to a startling final reveal. Add in a plucky heroine, a hero with unexpected depths, and cheeky meta references to the tropes at play, and this is sure to have readers hooked. (Jan.)