Heads You Lose

By: Lisa Lutz, David Hayward

Narrated by: Abby Craden

New York Times-bestselling author Lisa Lutz conspires with-or should we say against?-coauthor David Hayward to write an original and hilarious tag-team crime novel.

Meet Paul and Lacey Hansen: orphaned, pot-growing twentysomething siblings eking out a living in rural Northern California. When a headless corpse appears on their property, they can't exactly dial 911, so they move the body and wait for the police to find it. Instead, the corpse reappears, a few days riper . . . and an amateur sleuth is born. Make that two.

When collaborators Lutz and Hayward (former romantic partners) start to disagree about how the story should unfold, the body count rises, victims and suspects alike develop surprising characteristics (meet Brandy Chester, the stripper with the Mensa IQ), and sibling rivalry reaches homicidal intensity. Think Adaptation crossed with Weeds. Will the authors solve the mystery without killing each other first?

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Too much sniping

The "mystery" part of this book ranges from the absurd to the merely predictable, but what's truly annoying is the sarcastic and mean-spirited tussling between the two authors. I'm not sure why this book saw the light of day, and I trust Lisa and Dave are now done with each other. I know I'm glad to be done with them.

not a fan

normally enjoy the work of lisa lutz but this was a dud for me. the sarcastic and borderline abusive banter between the authors as read from authors notes was distracting and just nasty. The plots had no continuity and switching narrators every other chapter made it harder to follow the characters a character would have a different voice quality with each narrator and one of the ways to follow a character in an audio book is by voice quality, inflection, speech patterns etc so it made it very unpleasant trying to identify with the characters. IMO it's a miss

A Quirky Book

Is the story about the murder mystery? Or is the story about the co-authors swatting at each other like immature teenagers in their end of chapter notes? It's hard to tell. Both are semi-entertaining but neither lives up to a full story. And the combination doesn't create a whole bigger than the sum of its parts.

The Bickersons write a murder mystery

Leaving in the unvarnished authors' notes to each other is certainly original, but I'm not sure that in the end it was such a good idea. It doesn't show either one in the best light, and perhaps is proof that reconnecting with exes is a bad idea. The story itself ended up being passable, despite the fact that you get to see Lutz and Hayward wrestling over everything throughout. But the Spellmans series is better.

The notes!

What disappointed you about Heads You Lose?

Thank goodness for the notes, or maybe it's the notes? I don't know what it is, the story was hard for me to follow, sometimes the notes helped, and sometime the notes got in the way. When I'm listening to a good book I want to be in the moment of the story, and the notes would take me into another moment, reality.

What was most disappointing about Lisa Lutz and David Hayward ’s story?

The notes I think??? I would finally start enjoying the story, and then authors would break in with notes.

What didn’t you like about Abby Craden’s performance?

I didn't NOT like her performance, it's just I couldn't enjoy it fully because of the notes.

What character would you cut from Heads You Lose?

I don't know, there where so many characters!

Any additional comments?

I do enjoy Lisa Lutz' writing loved her Spellmans series. However, I have to say there are more cons, than pros to recommending this book.