Welcome, friend! I can’t recall the last fun book I read from a reporter’s point of view, but I definitely won’t be forgetting The Story That Wouldn’t Die for a long time! This is the second book in a mystery series, and if you haven’t read book one (like me!), don’t worry. You’ll be able to dive into this without much background. Here’s what the book is about:
Christina Estes | Goodreads
Emmy Award-winning reporter Christina Estes uses her twenty-year career for inspiration for her mysteries. In The Story That Wouldn’t Die, Jolene Garcia refuses to stop investigating, but someone is determined to kill the story—and maybe her—for good.
Phoenix, Arizona TV reporter Jolene Garcia is fresh off winning her first Emmy and committed to covering stories that matter to her community. But Jolene’s managers want stories that grab immediate attention and generate clicks, not ones that take time to develop.
When a beloved small business owner dies in a car crash, Jolene isn’t convinced it was an accident. He’d been raising questions about who keeps getting lucrative deals at city hall—questions that powerful people don’t want answered. The deeper Jolene digs, the more suspicious things she uncovers.
Exposing greed, ambition, and deception could become the biggest story of Jolene’s career. Her bosses tell her to drop it. But there’s a story here, and Jolene’s going to find it.
The Story That Wouldn’t Die – Review
I don’t watch news, but once in a while, I will come across local stories, and the atmosphere of local reporting is intriguing to me. Jolene is a local news reporter in Phoenix, and she divides her time between stories her manager wants to work on — are cupcakes sold in the city gluten-free like they say they are? — and the ones that she wants to pursue. Early in the book, a lawyer brings the possibility of corruption in development contracts to her attention, and she can’t help investigating. A particular person seems to win all the contract bids every time, and a new developer has complained of favouritism. Jolene finds herself in a complex web of a lobbyist’s murder, the new developer’s car crash, and the ever-winning developer’s untimely death while putting up Christmas lights.
This is a fast-moving story, and I loved it! Jolene’s sense of humour is hilarious, and her mental commentary made me chuckle in every chapter. On her Instagram, author Christina Estes has been posting a funny gem from each chapter, and that has matched well with what I found to be amusing. The story portrays the challenges in local news reporting, from having to spend time on useless stories that a reporter may not believe in to finding the ones that matter, to juggling social media presence, being the first on site, getting exclusive interviews, writing copy, reporting live — the work is endless and competitive! Jolene has so much to take care of, and it’s no wonder that her mental health is sliding with no family to look out for her. She knows that she has to do the uninteresting stuff and wait for the big break. But it’s so hard to wait.
Jolene is an emotional and compassionate person. Her childhood was not a good one, and she relates to the petioles who work hard and are trying to make a living in a world that constantly favors the rich and connected.
Her assignments take her all over the city, and if I knew Phoenix, I’m sure I would know the places she goes to. I did Google a few, and their menu looked great! It’s neat that I got to see this side of a local reporter on the move, nourishing herself (at least when with colleagues). I really enjoyed the human interactions between colleagues, like Nate jabbing a fork in her lunch as she wasn’t getting off the phone.
I was blown away by how many people Jolene interacted with! From lawyers, mechanics, police officers, to paramedics and the Mayor, reporting news required connections to those who know. Her obsession with a story — how it keeps repeating in her mind, her brain trying to find new angles and make sense of it — is exactly how I problem-solve too, and I related to it!
The Story That Wouldn’t Die was a fun read that I read really fast. It was easy to return to. I liked the numerous characters that met, their quirks, relationships, and mannerisms. Crazy things happened, and Jolene was on the tail of something big as her gut had been telling her. I look forward to reading more of her.
Stay tuned for an interview with the author, going live tomorrow.
Many thanks to the publisher for a review copy of this book.
A non-fiction book I was reminded of: Kneading Journalism
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