Book Review: By the Time You Read This

Title: By the Time You Read This
Author: Brianna Labuskes
Genre: Mystery, Criminal Thriller, Fiction

What It’s About: Raisa has now purchased a home and set down roots. When she returns to her little bungalow from her latest job, she finds a letter from her sister, Isabel, who is in prison for murder. All it says is “By the time you read this, I’ll be dead,” and it makes her wonder who might have dropped off this letter. The next day she meets up with Callum Kilkenny, and together, they set off to figure out what had happened. At the prison, they find two different sides—those who strongly disliked Isabel for what she had done, including potentially additional people whose murder was never attributed to Isabel, and then those who liked her because they saw her as getting rid of the scum—those who hurt others.

At the prison, Raisa and Kilkenny talk to someone, who does not like the insinuation that Isabel might have died by murder rather than natural causes—there is nothing to suggest that there was foul play, so they get quickly ushered out with Raisa holding onto the box containing Isabel’s belongings. The two begin their investigation by talking to the two women spearheading the two sides of the fence on Isabel. One of them, they realize she’s really a grifter who is feeding on other people’s losses to make herself some money, and ultimately Raisa realizes that this woman had been the person behind her own father’s criminal organization before he was supposedly killed by Isabel, though there is no other proof. The other girl, Gabriella, tells them that she’s for Isabel because she had killed men and other being who were cruel to others, and it seems that Gabriella has trauma that may be tied to experiencing something along those lines.

The investigation takes them to find Delaney in Seattle, because Delaney has been seen at the location of three of the victims that Gabriella had found to be seemingly unconnected—another series of deaths that are unexplained but tied to people who have not been good people. Raisa looks through the window, and then hides, but Delaney feels someone’s eyes on her through the window, and she bolts for the ferry, where Raisa gets assistance from a man to bump into Delaney and drop an AirTag so that they can continue following her. As expected, Delaney takes the ferry into the bay, drops her phone into the water, and then turns back around, before making her way to the small town near the prison, where she rents out a hotel room. There, she meets a man, with whom she begins to have a bit of a relationship. At some point, Delaney goes to meet with Gabriella—having scoped her out as a potential bad actor, at a bonfire. Unbeknownst to Delaney, Gabriella had been pulled into an undercover mission by Raisa and the lead detective on the cases, now that Callum Kilkenny has been taken out of commission—he had been knocked over by a van driving straight for him and Raisa, after they had an argument outside about the investigation. As a result, Kilkenny had ended up in the hospital and underwent emergency surgery to release the swelling to his brain.

Raisa and the detective follow Delaney to a nearby hotel, where Delaney begins a relationship with a person who is staying at the hotel. The man also had been questioned by the Detective and Raisa due to his connection to one of the three victims in the vicinity, but he had ultimately been cleared. He knows who Delaney is and reveals that later on, but he also tells her that she is being watched by the police as she had been seen with the victims as well, before their deaths.

Through their research, and questioning, Raisa realizes that Gabriella is the murderer of these victims, and they go chasing after Delaney, who had been called to visit Gabriella, and they get there in time to save her life. But Gabriella runs off to the cliffs, where she jumps off. Raisa does catch her, but due to Gabriella’s weight, she has to let Gabriella go.

Kilkenny wakes up and notices that she got her guy, which Raisa confirms. Delaney, in the meantime, pursues the relationship with the guy she was seeing, after having been cleared of any charges and connections to the victims

My Thoughts: I think it’s good riddance that Isabel is gone, but I do feel like the whole story was a less interesting than the first one, or even the second one, as it’s kind of weird that Isabel is still playing these games even once she’s dead and all the way from prison. What is never truly explained is how does Delaney even know the ultimate victims and why does she visit them when they’re alive-we do see a few chapters from her perspective, including one where she goes to visit one of the victims at her job. It’s never explained and her motives remain unknown, so even though the book and the series is finished, it feels like her stuff is unfinished and almost like she was a secondary character in a book where she was actually one of two main characters.

I didn’t love it but I also didn’t hate it—I enjoyed reading it to the end, and it sincerely kept me engaged in the book to try to figure out who is the one who had been the murderer; however, none of the characters gave a strong whodunnit look except for Delaney, who seemed to have been used as a way to mislead the reader into thinking it was her, when in reality if you read the first two books, you’d have known she’s not a killer, so she was really easy for me to discount as the real killer. And neither Gabriella or the other lady seemed unhinged enough to murder, so Gabriella’s reasoning for the murders of these three people is a little think in my opinion—or perhaps the author’s writing of the story is what makes it seem to be weak.