Title: Yet a Stranger
Series: The First Quarto: Book Two
Author: Gregory Ashe
Publisher: Self-Published
Length: 438 Pages
Category: Murder Mystery
At a Glance: I may not know much Shakespeare, but I do know a good murder mystery when I read it, and good romantic suspense. This is both.
Rating: 5 Stars
Reviewed By: Lisa
Blurb: When Auggie Lopez returns to Wroxall College, he’s determined that his second year will be different from the chaos he faced as a freshman. He’s living in the Sigma Sigma house, he’s got a good group of friends, and his social media presence is growing. Meeting a hot older guy on move-in day is just the cherry on top. All he has to do now is avoid getting dragged into another murder.
That last part, though, turns out to be easier said than done, especially when Auggie’s ex-roommate, Orlando, asks for help. Orlando’s brother Cal has gone missing, and Orlando wants Auggie to find him.
Auggie knows he’ll need help, but recruiting his friend—and crush—Theo is not as straightforward as he expects. While Auggie was gone for the summer, Theo has started dating someone, and neither Theo nor Auggie knows how to handle the shift in their relationship.
Finding Orlando’s brother dead only makes their situation more complicated. Although the police are quick to write off the homicide as a drug deal gone wrong, Auggie and Theo aren’t so sure, and Orlando begs them to keep investigating. To learn the truth, Auggie and Theo will have to untangle a web of lies while keeping each other safe from a killer who is determined to stop them.
As Auggie and Theo dig deeper, they realize that Cal was a stranger even to the people who thought they knew him. And Auggie and Theo both begin to fear that they are also strangers to each other.
Review: The sum total of my knowledge of Shakespeare’s body of work could fit on the head of a pin . . . with room to spare. What does that have to do with anything? Well, it just so happens that the Bard is the subject of Theo Stratford’s graduate thesis, and Gregory Ashe taps into that wealth of literary allusion to build his character, and then insinuates an undergrad student, Auggie Lopez, into the story to entangle him with Theo, and Theo with Auggie, in ways that are still playing out.
And oh, what a tangled web he’s weaved.
Auggie and Theo are the star-crossed lovers in this series, the sort of characters that Ashe seems to create so effortlessly, time after time. Making them suffer for the sake of the craft goes a long way when neither of them knows what they want, or who they want, or what they deserve, or who they deserve, let alone how to face all the crap that comes their way and complicates what’s brewing between them. Mm-hmm, there’s something brewing all right, but Theo’s drug problem and the ghosts of his losses, and the daughter he loves so much, are knotty enough issues without bringing Auggie into the picture—Auggie, who’s only twenty years old, and was a former student. Couple that with the fact they’ve both settled for people who emotionally and verbally abuse them, and are unequivocally wrong for them, and it all adds up to the makings of a bitter tragedy. Except we know better. They’ll be fine . . . eventually. They just need to live long enough to see it through.
Orlando Reese, whose family is in contention for worst family in the history of families, and the guy Auggie thought might have had boyfriend potential their freshman year, until it all went sideways, throws a new investigation into Auggie’s lap when Orlando asks for help in finding his brother Cal’s killer. Because of course there’s a murder. This is Wahredua, after all. As Auggie and Theo dig deeper and get closer to the truth, wading through a field of tripwires and bombshells, and getting pummeled along the way for their troubles, it propels them towards something to which neither of them is ready to assimilate—giving a new name to their relationship. Oof, so many feels.
There are plenty of high points in this series, namely Theo and Auggie, but seeing the Wahredua PD pre-Emery Hazard is like peeking through a keyhole to the past, and John-Henry Somerset pre-Emery Hazard is something to savor, knowing where he is now. The murder mystery is resolved in the explosive way fans of this author have come to expect. What the aftermath will be remains to be seen, as Auggie makes an incredible gesture on Theo’s behalf to further his prospects, and as Auggie heads into his junior year at Wroxhall.
I may not know much Shakespeare, but I do know a good murder mystery when I read it, and good romantic suspense, and when it comes to Ashe’s collection of work, I have a thought or three about the satisfaction that results from watching two people suffer so intensely, blow after blow—both the emotional and the physical—for the reward of their eventual happy ending. The theory that nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, difficulty, and pain must play into this indulgence of this misery somewhere, but it may also be wise not to examine it too closely. Just sit back and endure the journey.
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