For a Non-Detective, Charlotte Sure is Busy Detecting
When Charlotte Illes is Not a Detective crossed my path, I couldn’t resist. I read and loved the child detective series as a kid, so the premise of a child detective all grown up and retired from detecting was just too much fun. While it wasn’t completely my cup of tea, I had fun reading it overall.
Charlotte Illes is a twenty-five-year-old woman who is between jobs while going on a series of first dates. She is trying to put her past as Lottie Illes, child detective extraordinaire, behind her. Charlotte is NOT a detective - she’s retired. And that’s what she keeps telling herself.
But then her brother calls. Someone is leaving weird sticky notes for his girlfriend on their apartment door. It’s probably nothing, but can Charlotte come down and figure out what is going on? She reluctantly agrees, only to find the case morphs into something that includes kidnapping and murder. Can Charlotte figure out what is really going on?
Not being on TikTok, I wasn’t familiar with Katie Siegel before I picked up the book. Apparently, Charlotte already has an audience since Katie first introduced her via that platform. I was a bit worried about how that might translate into a novel, but it works. Occasionally, we get a weird aside or a mental list that Charlotte is composing in her head, but it fits the tone of the book and I found them fun.
However, I did have some other issues. I was a little worried when I spotted a content warning at the beginning of the novel. I get this was the author’s choice, but that made we wonder what I might be getting into.
What I was getting into was a queer mystery. In fact, the queer characters felt like they outnumbered the straight characters, although I didn’t keep count. There were times a character would throw out a line or two that was definitely coming from a world view I don’t have and the characters would say something about me that definitely isn’t true, but this wasn’t an issue book. These moments were kept to a minimum, and the focus was on the mystery.
I did feel at times that this book wasn’t really aimed at me. I’m not sure if it was the world view issues I just talked about or the fact that these characters are definitely Millennials that caused the issue, but again, these moments passed relatively quickly.
I know, this is sounding like it is a negative review, right? Trust me, it isn’t. I want to be clear on what some of my issues with the book are, but they are minor overall because I had fun as I read it.
In addition to Charlotte, we also meet her two best friends, Lucy and Gabe. They make a fantastic trio. Not only do they work well as a team, but we can feel the love and history between them. They all have their moments to shine, and they all have their moments to grow. There’s a lot of that in the book, in fact. The rest of the cast is just as strong.
The mystery was solid as well. I was a step ahead of Charlotte a couple of times, but never by more than a few pages. The solution made sense and answered my questions. The pacing was uneven in the middle, but it was never long before it picked up again.
And I can’t leave out the humor. I was smiling and laughing plenty as I read, usually at the antics between the friends.
I do want to issue my own content warning. There are enough four letter words that this would be more traditional than cozy. As usual, as long as you know that going in, you should be fine.
I think that Charlotte Illes is Not a Detective is going to be a huge debut. Now that I know what I’m getting with this series, I expect that picking up another book would be a smoother reading experience for me. And I am curious about what happens to Charlotte next.
NOTE: I received an ARC of this book.
This looks so cute and I love the premise. Definitely one I need to read. Thanks for the warning about the language and the weird asides. Definitely one I need to read.
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