Kyra Davis

Obsession, Deceit, and Really Dark Chocolate

Sarah Sammis

** spoiler alert **
           First and foremost, revenge plots never go well. In the previous two, Sophie has turned to her faith and traditions to cope and to strategize. Here save for numerous scenes of eating sweet foods to counter the bitterness of the situation, she otherwise ignores things that worked for her in the past.

The second problem is mystery's heavy reliance on kink shaming to move the plot forward. Obsession, Deceit, and Really Dark Chocolate reads like a Bay Area based homage to The Killings at Badger's Drift by Caroline Graham (1987), despite being 20 years younger.

The third problem with this volume is the author's complete disregard for East Bay geography. An extreme version of the San Francisco resident is one who can't imagine life outside of the city's bounds. Here, though, Sophie is supposedly investigating things outside of San Francisco but the author forgets that Alameda County exists and puts Livermore into Contra Costa County. She also has the myopic view that the Bay Area doesn't extend beyond the Caldecott tunnel. I would argue that cities serviced by BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) would be by definition, in the Bay Area.

http://pussreboots.com/blog/2023/comm...

Sophie Katz's relationship with the irresistible and occasionally insufferable P.I. Anatoly Darinsky is on the fritz when a friend recruits Sophie's investigation skills to decode her possibly two-timing husband's strange behavior.

Obsession, Deceit, and Really Dark Chocolate

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