Read time: 4 minutes
🎧 Listened in audio | ⏱ Duration: 11 hours
📢 Narrated by Vikas Adam, Tyla Collier, Logan Rozos, Nicky Endres
🏷️ Publisher: Books on Tape / Sourcebooks & Poisoned Pen Press
📅 Published: June 2, 2026
📖 Read as part of the MOTIVE 2026 books lineup & Goodreads Pride Month Challenge
Book Blurb:
From award-winning crime writer Lev AC Rosen comes a punchy, hilarious mystery-thriller. Meet Brandon: hopeless romantic, hotel night-shift worker, and a man who falls in love at the drop of a room key. When a handsome stranger named Jon checks in and invites Brandon upstairs, Brandon ignores every sensible instinct his friends possess. They hook up, Jon promises to text, Brandon falls hard, Jon ghosts. Classic. But when Jon checks out early, leaving behind his bag and phone, Brandon goes looking for his Cinderella story and instead stumbles into a murder, with Jon fleeing the scene. Now Brandon and his crew of loveable, chaotic queer twenty-somethings, Ollie, Nicole, and Ian, are playing detective. What could possibly go wrong?
Let’s talk … murder!!!
Okay, I’ll admit it: I almost passed on this one. The blurb did not sell me. It reads like a quirky rom-com with a body count, and I wasn’t sure I was in the mood. But MOTIVE 2026 put it on my radar, and then the Goodreads Pride Month Challenge sealed the deal, and I am so glad both of those things exist because this book absolutely blindsided me with how much fun it is.
The four-narrator audiobook setup is where this one truly comes alive. Vikas Adam, Tyla Collier, Logan Rozos, and Nicky Endres each own their character completely, which matters enormously because the book’s signature move is replaying the same pivotal moments through each of the four friends’ perspectives. On the page that might feel repetitive; in audio, it genuinely works. You’re not re-listening to the same scene, you’re re-experiencing it, and there’s a real difference between how Brandon catastrophizes, how Nicole compartmentalizes, how Ollie catastrophizes while also being high, and how Ian catastrophizes while hate-stalking his ex. (The group chat scenes, by the way, was peak chaos. I would die for this friend group.)
What got me, though, was the found family energy radiating off every scene. These four are messy, dramatic, and deeply devoted to each other in that specific way that makes you grieve the group chats you don’t have. The middle section loses some momentum, which is the only thing standing between this and five stars, but the character warmth carries you through it. This is the kind of book Pride Month was made for.
Would I recommend it?
The found family dynamics are genuinely special, the multi-narrator audio cast is perfectly matched, and Lev AC Rosen clearly had a blast writing something this delightfully unhinged. If you’re here for a twisty queer mystery with strong found family vibes and layered storytelling, this absolutely deserves a spot on your TBR. It’s not perfect (the middle drags slightly) but the emotional payoff and character work more than make up for it.
Read Next
- The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman — If the bumbling amateur detective energy made you happy, this series delivers that same cozy chaos with a sharper mystery spine.
Book Links: Indiebookstore | Bookstore | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | Booktrovert | OpenLibrary | Litsy - Lavender House by Lev AC Rosen — If this book made you a Rosen fan, go back to where his queer detective voice began. A gay PI in 1950s San Francisco is darker and more noir, but just as compulsively readable.
Book Links: Indiebookstore | Bookstore | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | Booktrovert | OpenLibrary | Litsy - The Merry Spinster by Daniel M. Lavery — For readers who loved the chaotic found-family energy and queer sensibility with a darkly comic twist.
Book Links: Indiebookstore | Bookstore | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | Booktrovert | OpenLibrary | Litsy - In a Holidaze by Christina Lauren — Hear me out: similar “disaster romantic keeps making the same mistake” energy, just with more snow and fewer murders.
Book Links: Indiebookstore | Bookstore | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | Booktrovert | OpenLibrary | Litsy - One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston — Queer, found family, set in New York, enormous heart. If you want more of that “I want to be in their friend group” feeling, this is your next read.
Book Links: Indiebookstore | Bookstore | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | Booktrovert | OpenLibrary | Litsy
What’s Your Disaster Energy?
Are you a Brandon (falls in love by page two), an Ollie (vibes-based decisions only), a Nicole (has a plan, ignores own feelings), or an Ian (chaos gremlin with a soft center)? Tell me in the comments, and yes, this is a personality test now.
Book Links
Want to purchase this or any of your favourite books while supporting a local bookstore? Consider purchasing using the sites below. These sites work with independent local bookstore owners to fulfill your book orders. #SupportLocal
Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org
Track it: Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | Booktrovert | Litsy
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