The Verifiers - Jane Pek

Mystery/Suspense

Rating: 8.5/10

Claudia doesn’t always make good choices. She has no interest in her model minority families’ expectation that she embrace a conventional career and marriage. Rather than face those cultural clashes head on, she has honed genius level skill at keeping secrets from them.  Skills that will come in handy when she is recruited by Veracity, a referrals only online dating detective agency.

Being a fiercely devoted mystery reader, she thinks she has hit the job jackpot. When a client vanishes, she can’t resist assigning herself as lead investigator. Thinking it will bring her the closest she will ever get to being a detective like the ones in the books she adores.  But she is not to suppose to intervene in the lives of clients beyond whatever online enigma employees are tasked with solving on their behalf.

An amateur sleuth plunged into the world of big tech, internet connectivity and social media rabbit holes.  In our current landscape could there be a more fertile ground for humans to deceive, defraud and maybe, possibly, murder one another? I think not.

A clever and incisive examination of how technology shapes our choices.  Every. Single. One.

Claudia is a character that a reader cannot help but love.  She ping pongs around accosting strangers and possible murderers alike, juggles passive aggressive familial interactions and completely overlooks the obvious crush she has on her badass boss. 

Book Pairing(s):Strike Me Down by Mindy Mejia, Who Is Vera Kelly by Rosalie Knecht, Tomorrow, Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin