If Looks Could Kill by Andi Marquette

If Looks Could Kill by Andi Marquette

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This is one of those lesbian fiction books that have an immediate and obvious ‘Devil Wears Prada' vibe. Older powerful woman with an ice queen reputation and a much younger underling/intern. There is also an immediate and obvious twist.

Marya Hampstead is the ‘much older’ ‘ice queen’ fashion mogul. She does not have a point of view in this book, only the ‘intern’ does, more on her later. ‘Much older’? Well, that intern lied about her age (that setup reminds me of a television series that features a woman who is pretending to be something like 20-something (may or may not get a job as an intern in the publishing industry, forget if so), but is actually 40 something – her friend is a lesbian and there’s some vibe that the star might be, maybe, bisexual, but I’ve only seen episodes with her dating men (well one man, very very young man; the other is innuendo that the 'boss who is the same age as her real age might be into her if she was also his age and not pretending to be 20', not sure if there is any lesbian fanfiction for that show (oh, it is TV Land Younger, by the way)). ‘Ice Queen’? Well, just like the intern is lying about her age, Myra is lying about her persona (that specific part is revealed early on, other aspects of Myra’s backstory is revealed much much later).

So, why is the ‘intern’ lying? Because she, Ellie O’Donnell, is a NY police detective working on an undercover assignment (break here for: good god the scenes with her with her police co-workers made my skin crawl, all that sexual harassment just casually ‘there’, and Ellie not fucking caring that it was there, but meh, whatever – book is from 2016, only 2 years old, and it’s a different world).

Got distracted. Let’s try that again.

Ellie is working on an undercover assignment. The case involves investigating Myra Hempstead (the logic chain to insert Ellie into Myra’s life was twisted and kinda dumb – Myra was once seen, two months ago, near a guy who had a particular last name that’s the same as a person who does not now run guns, but is said to be getting into that business and has had one shipment of ‘legitimate’ stuff intercepted only to find it filled with guns (‘I do not know how that got in that box’), but whatever).

Two Russian families are running guns. One has family members being killed. The other might be a rival. Ellie is inserted to investigate . . . a fashion mogul who has no clear connection to the case other than being spotted in the company of someone of vague suspicion.

Ellie is shown to be brilliant at detective/investigative work; her co-workers (and others investigating the case) seem kind of dim-witted (since they didn’t spot what Ellie spotted – seriously, some of the things Ellie spotted were clever of her to spot . . . but still should have been spotted by the others). Also shown to be brilliant at undercover/intern work.

This is not a romance book, so I’ll skip that section of the review. Well, first: yes Ellie drools over Myra; Myra flirts with Ellie (not a quote ‘holy crap, is Myra flirting with me? Is she actually into women?’); stuff happens that does not correspond to a romance.

Interesting book. Not 100% sure why I feel this way, but feel as if it was vaguely ‘thin’ in certain aspects. Not sure what ‘aspects’ were thin. And good grief I hated every other person Ellie worked with in the police department. Gah. Sexist pigs the lot of them. Even Sue.

Rating: 3.75

June 30 2018



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