Elka Ray | Divorce Is Murder (Seventh Street Books)

216 pages | $9.99 Kindle Edition, $15.95 paperback

What if you moved back to your picturesque Canadian hometown and were haunted by all of the high school nightmares you went to summer camp with? Even worse, what if they were all still alive? Well, not all of them…

In Divorce Is Murder, Canadian author Elka Ray takes us on an engaging and suspenseful adventure with Toby Wong, an attorney who returns to her hometown to find that things have gone a bit sideways since she was a kid. Past and present run together with a little bit of future showing up as well in the form of Toby’s tarot card-reading mother.

This is a quick summer read with lots of humor and fleshed out characters. Toby is hired as a divorce attorney by her heartbreaking high school crush, Josh. The person he’s divorcing? Her own personal Mean Girl from school, Tonya. We don’t have time to wonder what their first super awkward meeting will be because Tonya turns up dead. The suspect? Toby’s client, Josh. The story kicks off quickly and Toby is joined by her pregnant best friend and a disarmingly handsome police officer in investigating whether her current client is also a murderer. And to further complicate things? Her crush on Josh is back with a vengeance.

As Tonya gets pulled deeper into the mystery, she keeps running into all of her tormentors from summer camp. Could the killer be one of these vipers? The question gets heavier as Toby worries she might be the next victim.

Elka Ray is the author of Divorce Is Murder. Born in the UK and raised in Canada, Ray has two previous novels, Saigon Dark and Hanoi Jane; a short-story collection, What You Don’t Know; and a series of children’s picture books about Vietnam, where she currently lives with her family. Ray grew up in Victoria, British Columbia, the setting for her latest mystery. When she’s not writing, drawing, or reading, Ray is in the ocean.

Ray’s globetrotting life brings an interesting perspective to Divorce Is Murder. It was refreshing to read a book with a person of color as the main character that did not resort to tokenizing that character by only discussing the ways that they were representatives of their culture.

If you like the Stephanie Plum books from Janet Evanovich, you’ll absolutely love Toby and her friends. | Melissa Cynova 

Learn more about the author at elkaray.com.

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