CW: Death/Murder, Bugs, a scene where a character is deadnamed

The minute I saw this cover (we featured it on Cover Awe!) and heard the series name was Midsolar Murders, I was sold. Honestly, I didn’t need to know anything else. In the most succinct genre description, it’s a sci-fi cozy murder mystery. While that definition holds true, it’s also a chaotic blend of world-building, an inventive cast of aliens, and serendipity.

For as long as she can remember, murders always happened around Mallory. Even curiouser, she seemed drawn to important pieces of evidence that usually helped break the case. It took a few murders before Mallory started to think this was more than just mere coincidence. Believing herself (rightfully so) to be some sort of magnet for murders has caused her to adopt a very isolated life. She avoids making friends or spending time with family. She writes cozy mysteries fashioned after her own experiences to make money.

When aliens first discovered Earth, there wasn’t much of a regulatory body handling alien tourism, allowing Mallory to stowaway off planet in an attempt to further isolate herself. She petitioned a sentient spaceship known as Station Eternity to allow her passage and surprisingly, Eternity did. The station, while housing all manner of alien life, only has three humans. Two of them, Mallory and Xan, are running away from something and the other, Adrian, serves as Earth’s ambassador. All three are shocked to learn of the station’s unexpected acceptance of more humans.

Of course, Mallory’s chief worry is that her dry spell of murders is about to come to an end. This hemming and hawing about the humans’ arrival takes about a good first quarter of the book. I found this part to be a bit of a hurdle as my brain screamed, “Get to the murders already!” But when they happen, boy, does it happen quickly! I don’t want to reveal the initial victim that kickstarts everything, as I was personally way off base in my own prediction and I don’t want to spoil any surprise.

Midsolar Murders provides a quirky little answer to the British Misomer Murders setup, specifically the question as to why a quaint and small locale has so many deaths. Well, of course, someone is cursed and the closer the setting or community, the more often it happens.

Pretty much all of the alien races aboard Eternity are much more advanced and put a lot of emphasis on symbiotic relationships. They find humans to be rather gross – too many liquids is the general consensus – but also lonely. Humans don’t naturally forge bonds for the purpose of mutually beneficial relationships. While the motivation for the station’s murders and why Mallory carries this curse drives the plot forward, it’s in these observations of us by alien eyes that I found myself immersed.

For this exact reason, the interactions between Mallory and a swarm of hive mind wasp-like creatures known as the Sundry were some of my favorite scenes.
This moment is from an early scene where she’s letting the Sundry study human physiology, using her as a guinea pig:

Human physiology changed from day to day with hormones, which they found fascinating in sentient beings. They’d explained that most beings evolved to hide the scene of strong pheromones from other species, which Mallory found nearly as strange as the fact that humans were the only species discovered that didn’t regularly bond with another sentient race symbiotically. According to the Sundry, humans were wandering around advertising their every hormonal shift to anyone paying attention.

She also discovered that her doctors were obsessed with how wet humans were. Some other races had blood, or something like it, but humans were the only race that had blood, and bile, and waste, and saliva, and tears…all liquid. Their organs needed these liquids to function, which also made them squishy inside. With no exoskeleton, and hormones acting like a siren to alert predators, how in the world had humans evolved instead of being devoured or falling apart in a big wet puddle of goo and bones?

Passages and interactions like these reinforce how out of her depth Mallory is. Mallory’s entire life has been about shunning other people for their own safety, but not everyone is as altruistic about their actions. If you’re a reader who likes a main character that is up against unbeatable odds or who is truly a good person, and still wants to be a good person, even when the world shows her people with grayer morals go further, you’ll really like Mallory.

Of course, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the romance in the book. Yes, there is one, but I personally found it meh. However, I say this as someone who prefers steamier scenes and enemies to lovers. A friends to lovers or second chance trope does nothing for me, sadly. If you love those, you’ll probably find more satisfaction there.

Surprisingly, this isn’t the first cozy-ish sci-fi mystery I’ve read lately. I also want to shout out Drunk on All Your Strange New Words. I’m loving the genre mashup of the setting, as a lot can be done in the sci-fi space, with a whodunnit mystery and amateur sleuth heroine. I’d love to see more!

While the setup did take longer than I had liked, stretching the tension to the limits of my patience, I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough once we got to the actual murder mystery part. Meeting all of the aliens, seeing how they existed within the station, and their interactions with Mallory was a fun and charming way to world-build, even if it did make me ponder my own frail mortality in the face of potential alien contact. And, despite the romance not being my jam, I know it’ll work better for some of you out there.

Also, bonus points for that gorgeous cover!