Book Review of Riley Thorn and the Blast from the Past by Lucy Score: Mystery, Romance & Complete Chaos

Some mystery series give you a brilliant detective quietly piecing together clues.

The Riley Thorn series gives you psychic abilities, a tattooed private investigator, eccentric elderly neighbors, questionable decisions, accidental disasters, romance, and occasionally severed body parts.

Honestly, why choose?

Riley Thorn and the Blast from the Past brings Riley and Nick back for another romantic mystery that somehow manages to be both genuinely suspenseful and completely ridiculous.

What is The Blast from the Past about?

Riley Thorn and her private-investigator boyfriend Nick Santiago have finally moved into their own fixer-upper.

Things are looking surprisingly normal.

They have a house.

There are no bodies in it.

Nobody appears to be actively trying to kill them.

Obviously this cannot last.

Nick becomes consumed by a cold case from his past, while Riley attempts to renovate their crumbling home and establish some boundaries with their extremely boundary-resistant elderly neighbors.

Then Riley is abducted.

Her psychic abilities suddenly stop cooperating.

And their new house guests appear to be connected to something dangerous.

Add a severed finger, accidental arson, a birthday party, and a mysterious figure from the past, and the relative peace is officially over.

The mystery is only half the fun

I think the appeal of this series is that solving the crime is almost secondary to spending time with the characters.

Riley and Nick have become a real couple, which means we get to see what happens after the initial romantic payoff.

And apparently what happens is:

Home renovation and kidnapping.

Very relatable.

Their relationship gives the ridiculousness of everything happening around them an emotional anchor.

Mrs. Penny and company

The supporting characters continue to be one of the best parts of the Riley Thorn books.

These aren’t background characters who quietly disappear when the mystery begins.

They are going to get involved.

Whether anyone wants them involved is irrelevant.

Lucy Score leans fully into the eccentric found-family atmosphere, and the result feels more like hanging out with a dysfunctional group of friends than reading a traditional mystery.

Cozy mystery’s slightly unhinged cousin

I wouldn’t quite call this a traditional cozy mystery.

There are darker crimes, adult humor, romance, and situations that would probably make Miss Marple reconsider her career choices.

But it scratches a similar itch.

You get a mystery without spending the entire book in darkness.

It’s funny.

There’s romance.

There’s a familiar group of characters.

And despite the danger, the books remain genuinely fun.

Final thoughts

Riley Thorn and the Blast from the Past is one of those books where describing individual plot points makes the entire thing sound increasingly insane.

Psychic kidnapping.

Cold cases.

Breaking-and-entering senior citizens.

A severed finger.

Accidental arson.

Romance.

Home improvement.

And somehow it all works together.

If you’ve already fallen in love with Riley, Nick, and their wonderfully chaotic circle of friends, this installment gives you exactly what you came for.