VIVIANA VALENTINE AND THE TICKING CLOCK (Girl Friday #3) by Emily J. Edwards will be released on November 7, 2023 by Crooked Lane Books.
The New Year gets off to an awful start for Viviana Valentine and her fiancé/partner Tommy Fortuna when they witness a murder while on their way to Times Square for the New Year’s Eve celebration. Despite not having a paying client, the two private detectives decide it is up to them to solve the man’s murder. Meanwhile, they have three other cases that they are working on—a missing banker, a duplicitous fiancée, and a man whose blackmailer is sending them on a scavenger hunt throughout the city for the next clue.
There is a lot going on in VIVIANA VALENTINE AND THE TICKING CLOCK with Viviana and Tommy working on four cases at the same time. Because of the four different cases—plus the storylines concerning Viviana’s relationship with Tommy and everything going on at her boarding house—the story was a bit chaotic and hard to follow. There was a lot of jumping around between the different plots and subplots. I was waiting for at least two of their cases to tie in together, but that didn’t happen. While still an interesting story, I didn’t think it worked as well as the first two novels in the Girl Friday series.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.