The Adventures of Isabel was a fun mystery. Set in Canada with an interesting cast of characters, Isabel is a recently “retired” social worker who is struggling to make ends meet. When a friend’s granddaughter is murdered, she is talked into poking around to try to find out the truth about what happened. I enjoyed the fun characters and the overall story. The author had a sarcastic style so I can see it being hard to follow for some. There was also a fair amount of LGBTQ+ references that maybe unknown to some. Also, and this isn’t any part of the story itself, but my advanced digital copy was organized very oddly (the lines were all over the place and the footnotes were in odd places and stuff) and that also added to some difficulty for me. Overall, I think it would be an acquired taste for many but a fun read for those looking for LGBTQ+ stories.

I'd like to thank the author, publisher and Net Galley for providing a free copy of this book in exchange for my review.

Wow, there is a lot packed into this book! This is a new author and a new genre for me. I've read LGBTQ+ books, and even some mystery/humor, but this just felt different. It also felt very 'now'. Like this is the book written for - well, maybe not 2020 because there was no explosions and what a year this has been! - this era. We are led through the story by an unseen/unnamed narrator who 'breaks the fourth wall', through a very complicated story and main character. But some of the MC's musings took over in the scene and the mystery was pushed aside a bit. I know others authors do that as well, but here it was a bit much.

I was left wondering about this MC, though, and would be curious to read more of her back story. IT looks like the author has other books published, so I'll keep an eye out for more. It was a fun read, certainly something different, and hey, it's set in Canada!

I’m going to preface this by saying that I’m not an OwnVoices reviewer for this book. I probably would have given 3.5 stars, but I’m upping it to four because, since I’m not an OV reader, it doesn’t seem right for me to downgrade a book that it’s entirely possible I didn’t understand all of the nuance, meaning, and importance of and that wasn’t written for me as a cis-het woman.

The easy-to-love: Dorsey has done a remarkable job making this story very naturally diverse and inclusive. The diversity and complex, intersectional identities of many of the characters are implicit and accepted rather than always having to fight for acceptance based on their identities I loved that aspect of Dorsey’s character and narrative development. The plot itself was also entertaining and I quite enjoyed reading the story. There are a few fun twists in it that were definitely fun to experience!

The slightly-harder-to-love: the book, to me, is just so...quirky. That isn’t a bad thing! This 100% goes down to preference in style. I found the protagonist’s relationship with the cat and what, again - to ME - felt like somewhat more intentional quirkiness took me out of the story a bit. It’s like the idiosyncrasies and peculiarities of the characters would have been believable if they’d stopped just shy of where they ended up. But I also have to say that the author is clearly creative, clearly is an outstanding writer, and this comes down to what your own sense of humor is and what kind of prose and characters you personally relate to most.

I also don’t doubt that perhaps people from within the community will greatly appreciate the representation that’s in The Adventures of Isabel, the way the characters are not tropes or predictable but are realistic, quirky like all humans are, and shown with enough respect to avoid tokenizing any person or identity. That’s important and I respect Dorsey a great deal for her work on this.

Overall, I did really enjoy this! It’s a fun read that’s captivating and creative. I think the author’s voice comes through strongly and it’s definitely an asset. Thanks so much to the publisher and NetGalley for this advance e-copy!

What I loved about this novel was the inclusion of a diverse group of fully developed characters and how their varied identities have an impact on their lives without referring to the character's choices in life. Neither didthe genre consume the book, but instead allowed for the social commentary from the nightlife of an urban Canadian city; It's up to you if you view it as seedy or not.

Is that the key to postmodernism? Well-written and realistic dialogue and not letting the reader in on every single movement of the daily minutiae of the narrator's everyday life gave the plot a good pace. In particular, the descriptions of pain were accurate and devoid of the usual cliches, and I'm grateful to Candas for using such explicit creativity to put a voice on the pain I sometimes experience.

The realities of detective work give the story some realism, and I loved the red boots, the use of the list and how they acted as a developed presence throughout the story; an excellent shortcut for pain too! I felt that the author dealt with heavy subjects and combined them with a realistic view and dialogue of a feisty and irreverent narrator to ensure it was palatable. I recognised lots of myself in the narrator; mostly frustrated by systemic gender inequalities and a savagely sweary womxn in their 30's.

I loved everything from the witty chapter titles, the non-conformity of genre stereotypes and increasingly the nascent, unnamed detective who is so quirky and fun that I can't wait to read the next instalment.

Would I recommend this? Sorry but no.
I am an ally of the LGBTQ+ community and was excited about that aspect of the book.
As for the book... It was so hard to like the characters.
As a cat lover, I did not think the whole cat thing worked, also Bunnywit and then calling it F*ckwit.... Come on. They are cats. Cats are weird.
The protagonist is a language purist, though ends up with a Chinese woman who can barely understand her, and she keeps using "big" words in conversation with her.
Also I felt like the Jian thing was uncomfortable... might have worked better if she was from a different nationality?
I haven't read a lot of fiction that has strong confident LGBTQ+ characters, so it was an extra let down. I'm sorry for the frank review.

Quirky and strange are really the only descriptors I can think of here. Well worth a read but the writing style isn't for everyone.

I was given a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review of the story.

I LOVED THIS BOOK.

The entire book made me fell I was sharing a rich, mellow red wine while a friend kept me on the edge of my seat as she recounted her day.

If you like strong narrative, strong characters who blindly keep pushing through to find answers, THIS book is for you.

I did like the that this book was all about the LGBTQ+ community and did discuss some important topics such as harassment, sexism, and racism. That's why I had requested this in the first place, as well as the cute cover. However I found that it tried a little too hard to be quirky or weird and I can't stand that. I ended up having to stop reading this - I got uninterested too fast. Perhaps at another time I will be able to revisit this for a fair review. Thank you for the advanced copy!

The Adventures of Isabel follows an unnamed protagonist and her cat, Bunnywit, when she is suddenly brought onto a case as an ameteur sleuth. Hep is a good friend of hers whose daughter, a sex worker, is murdered. Knowing that individuals with "high-risk" occupations don't get the same treatment when it comes to investigations, Hep asks the narrator for her help. In that time, the narrator helps other friends, explores her identity as an ambisexual, and revisits her past. 

What I liked the most about The Adventures of Isabel was its call for diversity and how it brought attention to issues that certain groups face. The most obvious based on the synopsis is the treatment of sex workers and other "high-risk" people, but we see other issues discussed as well. The narrator was let go from her job after her employer discovered her sexual orientation, which, while illegal, is also reality for many. Then there's Jian, a woman who became homeless due to domestic issues. There's a lot of different groups of people represented in this book, and throughout the book you can see how their identities impact them in different ways.

Despite the diverstiy in this book, I was surprised by some of the characters and the dialogues they took part in. Apparently this book was sensitivity-read, but there were some instances where I stopped and questioned whether I read what I just did. And the narrator in particular was just not always likeable to me. She had an interesting backstory, and her snark was there for comedic purposes, but there were so many times where she came off as too abrasive.

Additionally, the story was organized in such a way where the mystery wasn't really at the forefront of the novel. I understand why this is, but I think that this story is just so dialogue-heavy and not reliant enough on descriptions that some elements of the story get lost in it. For example, there are many times where the narrator discusses her ambisexuality, but I think that these scenes could have been more powerful with more reliance on description and action rather than dialogue.

Overall, I liked the concept of The Adventures of Isabel and what it aimed to do in terms of not only a mystery novel, but also one that embraced diversity. But I do also think that this book could be improved with a more organized storyline and more consistency overall.

A lot of people will probably enjoy this mystery with queer protagonists, but I found it too dense with self-conscious jokes. Isabel is an out-of-work social worker, who has been tasked by an elderly friend to unravel the mystery of the friend's granddaughter Maddy's death. Maddy was a sex worker and drug addict, so her death doesn't appear to be that big a mystery, until Isabel finds some strange items in the apartment Maddy had shared with another girl, who goes missing herself. Then Isabel's apartment gets trashed, and she's attacked outside a club.

If there were fewer jokey asides and footnotes, I might have made it through. Note to the publisher regarding one of the footnotes: "Oprah, Uma" was David Letterman, not Billy Crystal.

"The Adventures of Isabel" was an amusing book. The story deals with some heavy subjects -- murder, assault, drugs, fraud, harassment and physical attacks on LGBTQ individuals -- and the author treats these issues seriously. However, some of the characters, especially the main character, Isabel, are rather irreverent in how they talk about their experiences. This is in part a defense or coping mechanism, but Isabel is also just somewhat snarky. As a result, it makes for some rather amusing dialogue. The main character, Isabel, is an ambisexual former social worker who lives in an apartment with her cat, Bunnywit, and, unable to find another social work position, is considering making a business of the other thing she does well (if you catch her innuendo), when she receives a phone call from her very gay best friend Denis, who wants her to accompany his neighbor, Maddy Pritchard, otherwise known as Hep (due to her striking resemblance to Katherine Hepburn), to the morgue to check out a dead body that is likely her granddaughter, also named Maddy. Hep and Denis convince Isabel to try to solve Maddy's murder, knowing that a dead prostitute is not exactly going to be high priority for the police. The efforts to solve the murder result in Isabel making some new friends, making some dangerous enemies, becoming reacquainted with some former associates, and having some rather interesting (and at times very unpleasant) experiences.

I don't want to say anything more about the storyline because a lot of what makes the story so enjoyable is finding out what happens next and how the characters react to the new revelations or events. The characters are creative and well-developed and there is some rather good dialogue. There is also some significant personal growth/reevaluation of past beliefs with some of the characters, which proves critical in solving the murder and preventing additional crimes. The author includes some pretty good surprise twists in the story. I would certainly recommend this book.

I received a copy of the e-book via NetGalley in exchange for a review.

Ok, so which is it? Is it Canadian Lisbeth Salander meets ambisexual Kinsey Milhone or is it ambisexual V.I. Warshawski meets Kinky Friedman? Because, of course, it would be too much to ask for the official description to feature originality when it can safely rely on convenient genre name dropping instead. The only thing you do get out of all that for sure is that the protagonist of this novel is ambisexual (the latest PC label for bisexuality), because for one thing she herself never shuts up about it. Well past the who cares about it, it’s 2020, that’s about the least original you can be sexuality wise juncture. So anyway, aside from that the not so mysterious albeit mysteriously nameless protagonist isn’t at all a private investigator, she’s a laid off social worker who as a favor to a friend and (mainly) out of financial desperation sets off to investigate a murder of a friend’s granddaughter, a 20 year old prostitute and a junkie. Needless to say, some unsavory characters are to be expected, but her investigation ends up reaching well into the higher echelons of the local social elite. And along the way there are plenty of stumbles, oodles of fun, lively, well positively flamboyant, characters, impressive amounts of drag and copious amounts of beatings. I mean, main character as a punching bag sort of beatings. In that way I suppose one might say she is kind of reminiscent of V. I. who also tends to get in a way of fists and sticks. She’s certainly nowhere near the spectacular Miss Salander. I mean, for one thing she’s positively a Luddite, only acquiring her first smartphone for this case. Who even came up with that? Is it because she has some tattoos? Cause that’s just…dumb. There’s also an appropriately quirky love story. And how quirky, you ask? So quirky it features a homeless Chinese acrobat lady, that’s how. Because, remember, our character is bisexual. Don’t forget that, she won’t let you. To that extent she also makes absolutely terrible puns about it too. It’s actually almost incongruous with her otherwise very well spoken, clever linguistic turns, not to mention her uber strict, positively severe grammarian ways. So the overall effect is that of a smart well versed person occasionally punning at like stoned teen level, like getting wild amusement out of straight character having a straight face. It’s…what’s the kind word…silly. Our protagonist’s age isn’t specified either, but it seems to be somewhere around 40. Why the vagueness? Is it to have something to build on? There are further books in the series. Ones I may or may not read. It’s that kind of thing, to be fair I probably might if they showed up on Netgalley. It’s a pretty entertaining sort of thing, albeit it the main bulk of entertainment is derived from the characters, not the mystery itself. And with that sort of thing…once the quirkiness gets tiresome, that’s about it. The mystery itself didn’t really interest that much. It was there, it worked, the evildoers were just as quirky in their ways and with oh so amusingly (pun ready) names. The love story subplot was kinda cute, in fact appropriately cute for this sort of book. Because this is book is mainly cute, so cute it’s inexplicably set within the confines of Ogden Nash’s famous poem. Meaning short ish chapters with too many chapter titles. There are even some cute footnotes. So overall…entertaining, albeit the schtick was getting tiresome toward the end, it just wasn’t long enough to get monotonous or tedious. Pretty charming characters in a rainbow sparkles kind of way. A cunning linguist (puns, so easy) for a protagonist, aside from puns. Great social message of equality and inclusiveness
all around and all that. Read quickly enough. Fun was had. Thanks Netgalley.

★★★✰✰ 3.25 stars

“I spend my days staring at the wall and fantasising about disembowelling my cat as an offering to whatever bitch goddess has been organising my life lately. I am so depressed that if I could motivate myself to it I'd commit suicide, but it's too proactive for me.”


The subtitle of this novel is quite apt: 'A Postmodern Mystery'. The Adventures of Isabel is to detective/mystery fiction what Picasso is to Turner. Candas Jane Dorsey has written an absorbing and extremely metafictional (the narrator frequently 'breaks' the fourth wall) and feels very much of 'the now'. The novel's unmanned narrator, single, ambisexual, in her late thirties, a downsized social worker, is down on her luck. Her life takes an interesting turn when Maddy, the granddaughter of one her closest friends, is found murdered. Because of Maddy's line of work, Hep (aka her grandmother) believes that the police won't be solve her case.

“Hep then named an hourly rate which made even my overinflated self-indulgent subconscious blink, and between the emotional blackmail of being reminded how much I owed Denis, the memory of my empty cupboard, evocations of the pitiful dead kid, and greed, I was persuaded—provisionally, with confirmation to be given once I sobered up—to give up my career as a call girl and become a detective.”


Our protagonist begrudgingly takes on the role of 'detective', using her knowledge of the city's underbelly she uses a police connection and her extensive social network to solve Maddy's murderer. Her investigation is anything but straightforward, and often falls into the absurd a la Alice in Wonderland. The novel is less interested in the plot than it is with 'style'. The spotlight remains on the protagonist's meta narration. Dorsey's tongue-in-cheek portrayal of a 'contemporary' society is delightfully humorous.
The cast of characters are as entertaining as our narrator, and often their conversations spiral into the nonsensical. I particularly liked the narrator's relationship with her religious cousin and Jian (who is beyond cool). There are some running gags (Bunnywit's 'original' name, the fish sticks) that make the narrator's reality feel familiar.
As much as I loved the narrator's metafictional asides, or her ramblings on other characters' word-choices, it did seem that the 'murder story' was lost in all this postmodern cacophony. Amidst the characters' digressing discussions and our mc's various monologues, I often lost sight of the actual investigation. Still, I liked Dorsey's original approach to this genre, and I really 'clicked' with her protagonist. Without loosing the lighthearted tone of her narrative, Dorsey manages to directly address issues such as gender, sexuality, and race.
The novel's strength is in its energetic narrative and in the protagonist's dark humour. I will quite happily read another novel about this main character as I would like to learn more of her backstory.