These Toxic Things

Paperback, 429 pages

English language

Published Sept. 1, 2021 by Thomas & Mercer.

ISBN:: 978-1-5420-2749-6

(1 review)

A dead woman’s cherished trinkets become pieces to a terrifying puzzle.

Mickie Lambert creates “digital scrapbooks” for clients, ensuring that precious souvenirs aren’t forgotten or lost. When her latest client, Nadia Denham, a curio shop owner, dies from an apparent suicide, Mickie honors the old woman’s last wish and begins curating her peculiar objets d’art. A music box, a hair clip, a key chain—twelve mementos in all that must have meant so much to Nadia, who collected them on her flea market scavenges across the country.

But these tokens mean a lot to someone else, too. Mickie has been receiving threatening messages to leave Nadia’s past alone.

It’s becoming a mystery Mickie is driven to solve. Who once owned these odd treasures? How did Nadia really come to possess them? Discovering the truth means crossing paths with a long-dormant serial killer and navigating the secrets of a sinister past. One …

A dead woman’s cherished trinkets become pieces to a terrifying puzzle.

Mickie Lambert creates “digital scrapbooks” for clients, ensuring that precious souvenirs aren’t forgotten or lost. When her latest client, Nadia Denham, a curio shop owner, dies from an apparent suicide, Mickie honors the old woman’s last wish and begins curating her peculiar objets d’art. A music box, a hair clip, a key chain—twelve mementos in all that must have meant so much to Nadia, who collected them on her flea market scavenges across the country.

But these tokens mean a lot to someone else, too. Mickie has been receiving threatening messages to leave Nadia’s past alone.

It’s becoming a mystery Mickie is driven to solve. Who once owned these odd treasures? How did Nadia really come to possess them? Discovering the truth means crossing paths with a long-dormant serial killer and navigating the secrets of a sinister past. One that might, Mickie fears, be inescapably entwined with her own.

4 editions

𝐋’𝐀𝐏𝐏𝐄𝐋 𝐃𝐔 𝐕𝐈𝐃𝐄. reviewed These Toxic Things by Rachel Howzell Hall

A more modern Nancy Drew mystery

3 stars

I struggled with the first 40% of this book. I found the writing confusing. The story hops around and the author presents the flow of time in a way I am not used to reading. Conversations were hard to follow. I'm not sure if I got used to the writing style or if the editing changed but the more it progressed, the more it flowed and made sense. There is a lot going on, sometimes it felt like too much, but it all adds to the mystery and everything is fully explained by the end. The murder-mystery aspect is well crafted although it does seem unrealistic that the MC would be unraveling this mystery instead of simply turning the evidence over to the detectives. She takes unnecessary risks, putting herself in harms way.

The author insists on stating the race of every character that is introduced, even those who appear …

I struggled with the first 40% of this book. I found the writing confusing. The story hops around and the author presents the flow of time in a way I am not used to reading. Conversations were hard to follow. I'm not sure if I got used to the writing style or if the editing changed but the more it progressed, the more it flowed and made sense. There is a lot going on, sometimes it felt like too much, but it all adds to the mystery and everything is fully explained by the end. The murder-mystery aspect is well crafted although it does seem unrealistic that the MC would be unraveling this mystery instead of simply turning the evidence over to the detectives. She takes unnecessary risks, putting herself in harms way.

The author insists on stating the race of every character that is introduced, even those who appear for less than a paragraph which felt strange and unnecessary. Usually when an author goes out of their way to focus on specific details, like the color of the wallpaper in a room, you can expect that detail to become pertinent later on as the mystery unravels. Every time she states a characters race, I found myself filing that info away as a key piece of the puzzle, but it was all extraneous to the plot.

Rating this one is difficult because it ends a solid five stars, but the beginning was so messy that I can barely give it one star.

Subjects

Serial Killer Thrillers
Women Sleuths
Black Women Authors