Title: The Dead Guy Next Door: A Riley Thorn Novel (1)
Author: Lucy Score
What It’s About: A nice, normal life. Is that too much to ask? For Riley Thorn it is. Divorced. Broke. Living with a pack of elderly roommates. And those hallucinations she’s diligently ignoring? Her tarot card-dealing mom is convinced they’re clairvoyant visions.
Just when things can’t get worse, a so-hot-it-should-be-illegal private investigator shows up on her doorstep looking for a neighbor…who turns up murdered.
Nick Santiago doesn’t play well with others. Unless the “others” are of the female persuasion. Wink. He’s a rebel, a black sheep, a man who prefers a buffet of options to being stuck with the same entrée every night, if you catch his drift.
When the pretty, possibly psychic Riley lands at the top of the list of suspects, Nick volunteers to find out whodunit. Only because he likes solving mysteries not because he wants to flex his heroic muscles for the damsel in distress.
All they have to do is figure out who pulled the trigger, keep the by-the-book detective with a grudge at bay, and deal with a stranger claiming he was sent to help Riley hone her psychic gifts. All before the killer discovers she’s a loose end that requires snipping.
Our Thoughts: Two of my favorite tropes in the Romance genre are enemies-to-lovers and paranormal. When you combine the two, it’s even better. When I started reading The Dead Guy Next Door by Lucy Score, I had no idea what to expect. I’m going to be honest: The whole psychic living in a house full of elderly roommates had me questioning what kind of story this would be. This was my first book by Score, and it was quite an unconventional story.
Most of the paranormal Romance books I have read tend to be on the darker side with vampires and shapeshifters. The Dead Guy Next Door is not a book I would have considered reading before now. That isn’t to say I did not like it. It’s just this story is more on the dark comedy side. That’s not a bad thing either because it was quite entertaining. The moment I cracked the book open, I felt like I was reading something that could be on TV. Each character is unique and has many zany qualities.
Riley Thorn talks to the dead. Obviously, that makes her everyday life hard. Going out in public proves to be a challenge when she comes in contact with people because sometimes those spirits pick the most inopportune times to show up. Like when she’s just trying to grab her favorite cup of coffee at her local coffee shop. Not only does Riley talk to the dead, she also has visions of the future. Now that is an entirely different ball game and one she is reluctant to accept. That was something I found interesting. She would talk to the dead without giving it much thought but she refused to lean into the visions. But, when you think about it, that’s not an uncommon reaction. The future is scary especially if you already know what’s going to happen and you can’t really stop it.
That’s something Riley quickly finds out after her neighbor Dickie Frick is murdered in the exact fashion that she saw in her vision. Riley doesn’t always make the best decisions, and her deciding to try and issue a warning to him via a note and then dropping by the police station to get them to keep an eye on him backfires and places a target on her back, and she becomes a suspect. That’s where Private Investigator Nick Santiago comes in.
Nick, who happened to be doing an investigation into Dickie stopped by prior to the man being murdered, and it’s then that he met Riley. There’s a bit of that enemies-to-lovers tension right off the bat. And it doesn’t help that Riley literally has a vision of the two of them rolling around in bed together. After Dickie’s murder, Riley and Nick end up working together. The two bump heads occasionally as is the formula for an enemies-to-lovers trope. As the two of them work together they grow closer. Riley also starts to hone her psychic skills because she quickly learns it’s the ultimate tool in solving Dickie’s murder.
There were a lot of things I enjoyed about this book. There were some cons as well. I did feel at times it went on a bit long and some of the antics with the elderly roommates I could have done without. I also wasn’t a fan of how long it actually took for Nick and Riley to get together. They spent the vast majority of the book dancing around their feelings, which was a little frustrating. Also, the buildup to them having sex for the very first time was really long. Don’t get me wrong, I do appreciate a good slow burn, but I also expect a good payoff when that moment between the sheets arrives. And that’s not to say I did not enjoy Riley and Nick’s love scene; I just wanted a little more than what we got. Especially if it was only going to happen one time in the entire book.
The Dead Guy Next Door is a great book if you’re a fan of shows like Charmed, Will Trent, and, I would even say, Prodigal Son. I wanted to keep reading it to find out what would happen next. There are a lot of action-filled moments as well that keep you engrossed. And the chemistry between Riley and Nick is there and will have you rooting for them even when they’re getting in their own way in the relationship. I’m looking forward to diving into the second book. For my first Lucy Score book, I’d have to say this one was pretty good.