ARC Review: A New Lease on Death by Olivia Blacke

A New Lease on Death
Author: Olivia Blacke
Series: Supernatural Mysteries (Book 1)
Publication: Minotaur Books (October 29, 2024)

Description: Death is only the beginning in Olivia Blacke's A New Lease on Death, a darkly funny supernatural mystery that introduces an unlikely crime-solving duo.

Ruby Young's new Boston apartment comes with all the usual perks. Windows facing the brick wall of the next-door building. Heat that barely works. A malfunctioning buzzer. Noisy neighbors. A dead body on the sidewalk outside. And of course, a ghost.

Since Cordelia Graves died in her apartment a few months ago, she's kept up her residency, despite being bored out of her (non-tangible) skull and frustrated by her new roommate. When her across-the-hall neighbor, Jake Macintyre, is shot and killed in an apparent mugging gone wrong outside their building, Cordelia is convinced there’s more to it and is determined to bring his killer to justice.

Unfortunately, Cordelia, being dead herself, can't solve the mystery alone. She has to enlist the help of the obnoxiously perky, living tenant of her apartment. Ruby is twenty, annoying, and has never met a houseplant she couldn't kill. But she also can do everything Cordelia can't, from interviewing suspects to researching Jake on the library computers that go up in a puff of smoke if Cordelia gets too close. As the roommates form an unlikely friendship and get closer to the truth about Jake's death, they also start to uncover other dangerous secrets.

My Thoughts: A NEW LEASE ON DEATH introduces an intriguing pair of detectives. Ruby Young is twenty and has just moved into a fully furnished apartment in Boston which happens to still be occupied by Cordelia Graves who died there of a drug overdose a few months earlier and is now haunting the place. 

When the guy from across the hall is shot and killed outside the apartment, Cordelia and Ruby decide to investigate the death. Cordelia was there when Jake's ghost appeared but couldn't convince him that ghosts were real before he passed on to elsewhere. Ruby walked onto the scene on her way to her latest job interview and had only seen Jake a few times in the hallway. 

The first obstacle to the pair working together is the issue of communication. While Ruby believes in ghosts, she can't talk to them and being thoroughly modern doesn't have a pen and paper anywhere. Since Cordelia kills electronics if she gets too close to them, she can't use technology to communicate. Poetry refrigerator magnets are one way to solve the problem but a frustrating experience for both of them. 

As Ruby investigates Jake's friends and many, many girlfriends, Cordelia investigates the local pawn shops to find out who pawned Jake's missing watch and along the way meets the only other ghost she's run into in Boston. He is a great help to the loneliness she's been feeling since her own death. 

This story was entertaining. It is the first in a new series by the author. 

I received this one in exchange for an honest review from NetGalley. You can buy your copy here.