The initial concept of Deja Who is what first captured my attention. IT SOUNDED SO COOL! To put it as succinctly as possible (I’ll do my best to go into more detail later), the heroine Leah Nazir is an Insighter. Think of it as a therapist who can access a person’s past lives. While working as an Insighter, Leah is also trying to keep her own past lives from catching up to her, as she’s been murdered several times over by the same reincarnated killer, and she’s determined to turn the tide this time.

At its best, Deja Who works well as the first book in a cool urban fantasy series with a murder mystery at the heart of the plot. At its worst, Deja Who is a poorly executed romance with quite possibly the most annoying hero I have ever read.

The most fascinating part of the book is Leah and her clients. I could have read an entire book of Leah just meeting with people whose past lives are creating havoc in their present lives. As a word of warning, most of these past lives she deals with are horrible people (racists, famous murderers, etc.), so if you’re sensitive to those details, I would caution you against this book. Seriously, having Leah solve crimes and working out a criminal’s patterns via their reincarnations would have been so amazing! Unfortunately, that’s not what happens.

Most of the book is Leah struggling with keeping her toxic mother at arm’s length and trying to prepare for whenever her killer will strike. Throughout several of her reincarnations, she’s been killed. At one point, the killer has taken the role of her own mother. Sometimes it’s a stranger. But this time, Leah hopes to avoid repeating the past. Which leads her to stabbing P.I. Archer Drake.

Archer was hired to keep an eye on Leah. I won’t tell you by whom to avoid spoilers, but you find out about a quarter of the way through the book. After observing Leah for a couple weeks, he decides he’s in love with her. And that weirded me the fuck out. I get that keeping tabs on her is his job; that’s not the issue I have. The fact that he has formed a romantic attachment to Leah from having zero contact or interactions with her, just based solely on him tracking her movements, is concerning and creepy. The fact that Leah, once they meet, sees no real issue with his feelings for her, also seems grossly out of character.

Leah is cold, analytical, and to be frank, kind of a bitch. She doesn’t mince words and can be mean at times. Once she realizes Archer has been following her, she assumes he is her killer. As he approaches her, she stabs him out of fear and self-defense. It’s an awkward and painful meet-cute that I would have been on board with if ARCHER WASN’T SO CREEPY AND WEIRD.

Archer is in his late twenties and says some strange things. Things that made me roll my eyes and pretty much hate him anytime he opened his mouth. Here are some examples:

Deep in the middle of part-time job number sixteen, he watched Leah walk outside, blink up at the sun like some kind of gorgeous mole.

That was before he meets her, by the way.

He liked her dark hair, falling like a sleek curtain to her shoulders. He liked her dark eyes, big and wide-set, like a sexy hammerhead shark.

A sexy hammerhead shark. What. the. fuck. If Archer is into that sort of thing, maybe I should introduce him to Elyse and she could recommend some great marine shapeshifter erotica for him.

While I hated Archer, I do understand why Leah eventually warms up to him. Archer is “tabula rasa.” He has no past knowledge of his previous lives and Leah can’t tap into them. I’m sure it’s a relief not being bombarded with the knowledge of who the man you’re quasi-dating was in a past life. But the romantic elements in general were mediocre at best, and the plot would have worked better as just a strictly urban fantasy story rather than throwing in the Archer/Leah romance.

The mystery of Leah and her killer (at least in its current reincarnation – I have no clue if they come back in the next book) gets wrapped up in Deja Who. And I found the revelation of who the person is to be a bit of a stretch. I felt like it would have worked better if the killer plot stretched across several books – Leah working with clients while the tension mounts, as each day passes without confronting the person who wants her dead.

I will say this is my first book by MaryJanice Davidson. My mother has loved her Queen Betsy Undead series and I know this book has that same kind of silly, outlandish feel to it. So perhaps the writing style isn’t for me and I’m just being a big grump. Regardless, Deja Who had a great concept that ultimately delivered. It was all the other details – the characterization, the romance – that sullied my enjoyment.