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Ginny Dugan Mysteries #2
Liars in Paradise
With five days to clear her partner’s name after a horrific crime, private detective Ginny Dugan infiltrates a cultish secret society on Long Island’s Gold Coast in this champagne-soaked followup to Glitter in the Dark.
New York City, 1925. A night of high-stakes gambling at the Empire Club ends in gunfire and Jack Crawford is found at the center of the carnage—covered in blood, gun in hand. The club’s ruthless owner offers Jack an find the real shooters within five days, or die for their crimes.
Ginny Dugan hasn’t known Jack long, but as his partner in their detective agency, she needs to believe she’s trusted the right man this time. Their only lead is Lila, the sole survivor of the massacre. They follow her to a queer dance hall in Glen Cove, a Long Island Gold Coast town whose glittering summer estates now stand empty in the November chill. Among those who knew Lila, one name keeps Echelon, a seductive society where fortune is promised to those who surrender everything. Convinced the answers they seek lie within, Ginny and Jack infiltrate its ranks, where they encounter silent masked attendants, serpents sliding over bare skin, and members who seem to know more than they should—especially about Jack.
As the body count climbs and Jack’s past resurfaces in unsettling ways, Ginny begins to doubt her instincts, her partner, even her own reality. Maybe she was never in control. Maybe she was brought here to play someone else’s game.
New York City, 1925. A night of high-stakes gambling at the Empire Club ends in gunfire and Jack Crawford is found at the center of the carnage—covered in blood, gun in hand. The club’s ruthless owner offers Jack an find the real shooters within five days, or die for their crimes.
Ginny Dugan hasn’t known Jack long, but as his partner in their detective agency, she needs to believe she’s trusted the right man this time. Their only lead is Lila, the sole survivor of the massacre. They follow her to a queer dance hall in Glen Cove, a Long Island Gold Coast town whose glittering summer estates now stand empty in the November chill. Among those who knew Lila, one name keeps Echelon, a seductive society where fortune is promised to those who surrender everything. Convinced the answers they seek lie within, Ginny and Jack infiltrate its ranks, where they encounter silent masked attendants, serpents sliding over bare skin, and members who seem to know more than they should—especially about Jack.
As the body count climbs and Jack’s past resurfaces in unsettling ways, Ginny begins to doubt her instincts, her partner, even her own reality. Maybe she was never in control. Maybe she was brought here to play someone else’s game.
304 pages, Kindle Edition
Published August 4, 2026
About the author
Olesya Lyuzna
3 books40 followersOlesya Lyuzna is a Toronto-based author with one fatal flaw: she can’t resist a good mystery. Her debut novel, Glitter in the Dark, follows an advice columnist on the hunt for a missing torch singer, all while navigating forbidden feelings for a Ziegfeld showgirl in 1920s New York. Selected for a Pitch Wars mentorship by Layne Fargo and Halley Sutton, Glitter in the Dark is the first in a planned series that reimagines classic noir in the glittering, smoky world of the 1920s through a queer, female-driven lens.
When she’s not writing, you'll find Olesya hosting murder mystery parties, haunting Toronto’s historic movie theatres, and scouring the archives for unsolved crimes. Connect with her on Instagram at @olesyaisonline.
When she’s not writing, you'll find Olesya hosting murder mystery parties, haunting Toronto’s historic movie theatres, and scouring the archives for unsolved crimes. Connect with her on Instagram at @olesyaisonline.
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
August 23, 2026
A twisty, angsty, sparkling return to Ginny Dugan. The 1920s setting + themes of cults, manipulation, and control give this more of an edge than I expected. The plot is a smidge more convoluted than expected but there’s a darkness to it that kept me hooked. Lyuzna’s writing is sharp and evocative and translates incredibly well to audio (the narration here is excellent!).
I have enjoyed both books in this series so far and hope to see it continue. Nice to have some bi rep as well!
TY to Libro.fm for providing this ALC.
I have enjoyed both books in this series so far and hope to see it continue. Nice to have some bi rep as well!
TY to Libro.fm for providing this ALC.
August 8, 2026
🎧 Audiobook from NetGalley
This book was very much a rollercoaster ride. So many things came out of left field in a good way. So many things I didn’t expect, honestly. I like the way that when certain things happen, we then get a flashback to explain what it means. It’s written very naturally, like a scent triggers a memory. I surely didn’t expect that ending or the reason for it. This book kept me on my toes the entire time.
This book was very much a rollercoaster ride. So many things came out of left field in a good way. So many things I didn’t expect, honestly. I like the way that when certain things happen, we then get a flashback to explain what it means. It’s written very naturally, like a scent triggers a memory. I surely didn’t expect that ending or the reason for it. This book kept me on my toes the entire time.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Champagne, Snakes, Cyanide, and Excellent Filing
Olesya Lyuzna’s “Liars in Paradise” is a lively, overstocked Jazz Age thriller about a cult that keeps the paperwork and a lover who keeps the detective.
By Demetris Papadimitropoulos | July 29th, 2026
Detective work, in Olesya Lyuzna’s “Liars in Paradise,” begins with sorting. Ginny Dugan can identify adulterers as efficiently as chocolates in a sampler: the married truffle with the bitter finish, the nervous nougat, the social-climbing cherry cordial buttoned into hired evening clothes. Wedding rings, trembling shoes, clean mechanic’s hands – little betrayals are rarely as discreet as their owners. At the Empire Club, someone begins deciding which betrayals Ginny will be shown.
Earning rent through Shadow Investigations, Ginny and Jack Crawford tail faithless husbands through Manhattan clubs and sell truths their clients usually regret buying. Their agency is only three months old, but it has acquired the rituals of a weekday life: Jack arrives at nine, makes coffee, remembers the Tabasco on Ginny’s grilled cheese, and tries with limited success to impose order on her cigarettes and improvisations. Then a note draws him to the Empire. He wakes among nine bodies, blood on his shirt, his own military pistol in his hand. Dickie Stryker, the club’s proprietor and Jack’s former employer, gives them five days to identify the shooters and recover a stolen golden dove. If they fail, he will kill Jack and call the matter settled.
Missing from the carnage is Lila Summers, the lone survivor, whose abandoned coat contains a train ticket to Glen Cove. Ginny and Jack follow it into a Long Island town deserted by its summer millionaires, all shuttered estates, salt wind, and year-round residents left with the weather and the bills. Lila’s trail passes through Cherry, a queer dance hall, before climbing the hill to Echelon, a success cult housed in a Gold Coast mansion. Roman Blackwell promises members the richer selves they already rehearse in private, provided they confess, yield, and stop suggesting that abuse, poverty, or grief might originate anywhere beyond their own defective thinking. Echelon provides champagne, masks, narcotics, snakes, and excellent filing.
Echelon has locked cabinets, though Blackwell does his best work seated close enough to lower his voice. On the radio, he answers the story of an abused, destitute woman by telling her she has chosen victimhood. At the mansion, that cruelty acquires better upholstery. Members hand over the selves they wish to escape; their admissions, photographs, appetites, and humiliations remain behind. Echelon does not abolish the past. It keeps the paperwork.
The wax cylinders matter because a person can speak in the relief of being recognized and leave without the voice she surrendered. Blackwell retains it. The member may walk away lighter. The cylinder stays where it is, dry, labelled, ready to be played for someone else.
Roman’s filing system finds a private, erotic counterpart in Gloria Gardner, Ginny’s former lover and reigning private myth. Ginny has tried to turn her into a closed case. She keeps scraps, statements, feathers, perfume, and memories of the woman who taught her how to enter a room, court danger, and imagine a future with better clothes and fewer apologies. Gloria does not want Blackwell’s warehouse of reusable secrets. She wants Ginny’s attention to keep bending back toward her, whatever road Ginny believes she has chosen.
In Cherry, a patron’s name remains safe because everyone understands what the street might do with it. Shadow Investigations keeps confidences for a less romantic reason, though professional discretion counts even when the office furniture wobbles. At Echelon, members surrender names, crimes, desires, and fears to leaders who disclose nothing in return. Cherry keeps a secret safe. Blackwell keeps it useful.
Protective concealment makes Cherry more than the investigation’s best dance floor. Its patrons can breathe there before explaining themselves. Echelon borrows the privacy, ritual, coded recognition, and chosen company of such a place, but trust travels only upward. The same door closes in both rooms. Only one community gives back the key.
Across the novel, Lyuzna writes with Ginny’s quick appraisal. Close behind her heroine, the narration reads class in a lapel, suspicion in perfume, an invented life in the angle of a man’s shoulders. Sentences remain short or medium until a room overwhelms Ginny or memory breaks through. Mary’s pale body interrupts a joke. A torn dress becomes Gloria. Ginny keeps talking because silence leaves too much room for the dead.
Period slang arrives generously, sometimes with comic precision and sometimes after the scene has already introduced itself. Her descriptions sharpen when luxury and injury occupy the same image: gilded angels trapped inside the Empire, summer palaces gone cold in November, silk and marble made complicit in what happens against them. Lyuzna is less disciplined when each entrance demands a flourish or every threat receives a bright comparison. The prose has fizz, though occasionally it pours after the glass is full.
As the five-day deadline contracts, discoveries rearrange intimacies rather than simply enlarge the suspect list. Jack’s return to Glen Cove exposes the younger man he has tried to bury. Bella van Dorn, once Maribelle Penman, remembers the damage he left behind. Lila’s disappearance opens onto Blackwell’s records. Lottie, confined upstairs and severed from the name Charlotte Sweet, bears the result of Echelon’s promised rebirth in her altered speech, hacked hair, and terrified obedience.
Doubt nevertheless puts Jack on trial too many times in Ginny’s mind. A note summons him, evidence implicates him, part of the case is explained; then another omission or apparent betrayal begins the hearing again. Jack has hidden enough of his history to make faith difficult, while Gloria and Blackwell know which suspicion to press. Yet several turns in the middle postpone trust without changing what trust requires.
Inside that repetition, the case board runs out of blank cork: poisoned champagne, cyanide, a drugged initiation, a yacht, an archive, a mansion fire. Several elements deliver exactly the lurid pleasure promised by the snakes and evening clothes. Others open another compartment after the essential discovery has already been made. Gloria’s offence is intimate and plain. The plot around it is sometimes too elaborately furnished.
Margot, Bella, Lila, and Lottie suffer from that crowding. They enter with distinct histories and divided loyalties, then are repeatedly pressed into service as witness, suspect, rescuer, or source of the next explanation. Lila comes most fully alive when she refuses Ginny’s offer of rescue and insists upon finishing her own fight. Ginny has mistaken care for permission before. Lila will not let her do it again.
In Blackwell, accumulation has a similar effect. He is most unsettling on the radio, telling an abused woman that she chose the story of victimhood. Once his mansion acquires nearly every available vice, he grows harder to distinguish from the inventory. His smaller talent was nastier: he could hear what hurt and teach the injured person to accept the blame.
The conspiracy takes hold through particular weaknesses. Mary’s death sends Ginny charging toward women she believes she can save. Gloria’s perfume can still redirect her attention. Jack’s concealed history makes every planted clue easier to believe. The gun, witness, and typed notes are selected with care; Ginny supplies the pattern herself.
Readers of Katharine Schellman’s “Last Call at the Nightingale” will recognize the queer Jazz Age nightlife; Tara Isabella Burton’s “The World Cannot Give” offers a darker kinship in longing turned devotional. Lyuzna is busier and more openly melodramatic than either. She likes another trapdoor, another mask, another drop of blood on the stemware. In her best passages, Ginny’s desire is not a lapse from detection. It becomes part of the evidence she mishandles.
Ordinary acts give Ginny and Jack’s partnership its force. Coffee. Sandwiches. Repaired cloth. Case files. A shared office door with Shadow Investigations painted in gold. Their bond may be romantic, platonic, or still undecided, but its value is tangible. Jack helps make a future Ginny has chosen, modest enough to be real and shared enough not to belong to either of them alone. The agency is precarious. It is also hers.
Planted beneath the mansion plot is Gloria’s admission: she helped frame Jack because he had become proof that Ginny could build that future without her. The gun, notes, witnesses, drugs, and murders are romantic sabotage on an operatic budget. Gloria makes New York, Dottie, the agency, Jack, and Ginny’s own name progressively unreachable. Returning to her begins to resemble the last train still running.
On the final pages, Ginny boards that train knowing who laid the track. She destroys Blackwell’s archive and gives the police a false confession that clears Jack, allowing the newspapers to turn her into the glamorous murderess they prefer to the truth. Gloria buys or bullies her out of prison, arranges her legal death, and carries her west beneath a widow’s veil. The cell is gone. Ginny cannot return to her work, her sister, her city, or the partner she saved.
Understanding does not release her. Ginny knows Gloria helped create the emergency from which she now offers rescue; anger has replaced gratitude, but not attachment. Perhaps Ginny is staying close to the danger she finally understands. Perhaps she is repeating the attachment that has governed her all along. The book leaves her aboard the train before those possibilities can be told apart.
Lyuzna is surest when she stands close to Ginny, Jack, and Gloria. A repaired dress carries more feeling than another revelation. The setting has winter salt in its lungs, Ginny’s voice remains agile, and the story seldom lets its heels catch in the carpet. Now and then the snakes, cyanide, and burning mansion crowd Gloria’s simpler offence. She knows which future Ginny wants and sets about making it impossible.
On balance, “Liars in Paradise” earns 79/100 and 3/5 stars. Its atmosphere, velocity, central relationships, and refusal to mistake recognition for escape place it at the top of that range. The overstocked conspiracy, repeated prosecution of Jack, and compressed secondary women keep it from crossing higher.
Shrouded in black, Ginny rides west beside the woman who has seen her most clearly and loved that knowledge badly. The veil lets her pass as someone else while the train carries her farther from every life she chose. Outside, the country opens. Inside the compartment, Gloria is still holding the map.
Olesya Lyuzna’s “Liars in Paradise” is a lively, overstocked Jazz Age thriller about a cult that keeps the paperwork and a lover who keeps the detective.
By Demetris Papadimitropoulos | July 29th, 2026
Detective work, in Olesya Lyuzna’s “Liars in Paradise,” begins with sorting. Ginny Dugan can identify adulterers as efficiently as chocolates in a sampler: the married truffle with the bitter finish, the nervous nougat, the social-climbing cherry cordial buttoned into hired evening clothes. Wedding rings, trembling shoes, clean mechanic’s hands – little betrayals are rarely as discreet as their owners. At the Empire Club, someone begins deciding which betrayals Ginny will be shown.
Earning rent through Shadow Investigations, Ginny and Jack Crawford tail faithless husbands through Manhattan clubs and sell truths their clients usually regret buying. Their agency is only three months old, but it has acquired the rituals of a weekday life: Jack arrives at nine, makes coffee, remembers the Tabasco on Ginny’s grilled cheese, and tries with limited success to impose order on her cigarettes and improvisations. Then a note draws him to the Empire. He wakes among nine bodies, blood on his shirt, his own military pistol in his hand. Dickie Stryker, the club’s proprietor and Jack’s former employer, gives them five days to identify the shooters and recover a stolen golden dove. If they fail, he will kill Jack and call the matter settled.
Missing from the carnage is Lila Summers, the lone survivor, whose abandoned coat contains a train ticket to Glen Cove. Ginny and Jack follow it into a Long Island town deserted by its summer millionaires, all shuttered estates, salt wind, and year-round residents left with the weather and the bills. Lila’s trail passes through Cherry, a queer dance hall, before climbing the hill to Echelon, a success cult housed in a Gold Coast mansion. Roman Blackwell promises members the richer selves they already rehearse in private, provided they confess, yield, and stop suggesting that abuse, poverty, or grief might originate anywhere beyond their own defective thinking. Echelon provides champagne, masks, narcotics, snakes, and excellent filing.
Echelon has locked cabinets, though Blackwell does his best work seated close enough to lower his voice. On the radio, he answers the story of an abused, destitute woman by telling her she has chosen victimhood. At the mansion, that cruelty acquires better upholstery. Members hand over the selves they wish to escape; their admissions, photographs, appetites, and humiliations remain behind. Echelon does not abolish the past. It keeps the paperwork.
The wax cylinders matter because a person can speak in the relief of being recognized and leave without the voice she surrendered. Blackwell retains it. The member may walk away lighter. The cylinder stays where it is, dry, labelled, ready to be played for someone else.
Roman’s filing system finds a private, erotic counterpart in Gloria Gardner, Ginny’s former lover and reigning private myth. Ginny has tried to turn her into a closed case. She keeps scraps, statements, feathers, perfume, and memories of the woman who taught her how to enter a room, court danger, and imagine a future with better clothes and fewer apologies. Gloria does not want Blackwell’s warehouse of reusable secrets. She wants Ginny’s attention to keep bending back toward her, whatever road Ginny believes she has chosen.
In Cherry, a patron’s name remains safe because everyone understands what the street might do with it. Shadow Investigations keeps confidences for a less romantic reason, though professional discretion counts even when the office furniture wobbles. At Echelon, members surrender names, crimes, desires, and fears to leaders who disclose nothing in return. Cherry keeps a secret safe. Blackwell keeps it useful.
Protective concealment makes Cherry more than the investigation’s best dance floor. Its patrons can breathe there before explaining themselves. Echelon borrows the privacy, ritual, coded recognition, and chosen company of such a place, but trust travels only upward. The same door closes in both rooms. Only one community gives back the key.
Across the novel, Lyuzna writes with Ginny’s quick appraisal. Close behind her heroine, the narration reads class in a lapel, suspicion in perfume, an invented life in the angle of a man’s shoulders. Sentences remain short or medium until a room overwhelms Ginny or memory breaks through. Mary’s pale body interrupts a joke. A torn dress becomes Gloria. Ginny keeps talking because silence leaves too much room for the dead.
Period slang arrives generously, sometimes with comic precision and sometimes after the scene has already introduced itself. Her descriptions sharpen when luxury and injury occupy the same image: gilded angels trapped inside the Empire, summer palaces gone cold in November, silk and marble made complicit in what happens against them. Lyuzna is less disciplined when each entrance demands a flourish or every threat receives a bright comparison. The prose has fizz, though occasionally it pours after the glass is full.
As the five-day deadline contracts, discoveries rearrange intimacies rather than simply enlarge the suspect list. Jack’s return to Glen Cove exposes the younger man he has tried to bury. Bella van Dorn, once Maribelle Penman, remembers the damage he left behind. Lila’s disappearance opens onto Blackwell’s records. Lottie, confined upstairs and severed from the name Charlotte Sweet, bears the result of Echelon’s promised rebirth in her altered speech, hacked hair, and terrified obedience.
Doubt nevertheless puts Jack on trial too many times in Ginny’s mind. A note summons him, evidence implicates him, part of the case is explained; then another omission or apparent betrayal begins the hearing again. Jack has hidden enough of his history to make faith difficult, while Gloria and Blackwell know which suspicion to press. Yet several turns in the middle postpone trust without changing what trust requires.
Inside that repetition, the case board runs out of blank cork: poisoned champagne, cyanide, a drugged initiation, a yacht, an archive, a mansion fire. Several elements deliver exactly the lurid pleasure promised by the snakes and evening clothes. Others open another compartment after the essential discovery has already been made. Gloria’s offence is intimate and plain. The plot around it is sometimes too elaborately furnished.
Margot, Bella, Lila, and Lottie suffer from that crowding. They enter with distinct histories and divided loyalties, then are repeatedly pressed into service as witness, suspect, rescuer, or source of the next explanation. Lila comes most fully alive when she refuses Ginny’s offer of rescue and insists upon finishing her own fight. Ginny has mistaken care for permission before. Lila will not let her do it again.
In Blackwell, accumulation has a similar effect. He is most unsettling on the radio, telling an abused woman that she chose the story of victimhood. Once his mansion acquires nearly every available vice, he grows harder to distinguish from the inventory. His smaller talent was nastier: he could hear what hurt and teach the injured person to accept the blame.
The conspiracy takes hold through particular weaknesses. Mary’s death sends Ginny charging toward women she believes she can save. Gloria’s perfume can still redirect her attention. Jack’s concealed history makes every planted clue easier to believe. The gun, witness, and typed notes are selected with care; Ginny supplies the pattern herself.
Readers of Katharine Schellman’s “Last Call at the Nightingale” will recognize the queer Jazz Age nightlife; Tara Isabella Burton’s “The World Cannot Give” offers a darker kinship in longing turned devotional. Lyuzna is busier and more openly melodramatic than either. She likes another trapdoor, another mask, another drop of blood on the stemware. In her best passages, Ginny’s desire is not a lapse from detection. It becomes part of the evidence she mishandles.
Ordinary acts give Ginny and Jack’s partnership its force. Coffee. Sandwiches. Repaired cloth. Case files. A shared office door with Shadow Investigations painted in gold. Their bond may be romantic, platonic, or still undecided, but its value is tangible. Jack helps make a future Ginny has chosen, modest enough to be real and shared enough not to belong to either of them alone. The agency is precarious. It is also hers.
Planted beneath the mansion plot is Gloria’s admission: she helped frame Jack because he had become proof that Ginny could build that future without her. The gun, notes, witnesses, drugs, and murders are romantic sabotage on an operatic budget. Gloria makes New York, Dottie, the agency, Jack, and Ginny’s own name progressively unreachable. Returning to her begins to resemble the last train still running.
On the final pages, Ginny boards that train knowing who laid the track. She destroys Blackwell’s archive and gives the police a false confession that clears Jack, allowing the newspapers to turn her into the glamorous murderess they prefer to the truth. Gloria buys or bullies her out of prison, arranges her legal death, and carries her west beneath a widow’s veil. The cell is gone. Ginny cannot return to her work, her sister, her city, or the partner she saved.
Understanding does not release her. Ginny knows Gloria helped create the emergency from which she now offers rescue; anger has replaced gratitude, but not attachment. Perhaps Ginny is staying close to the danger she finally understands. Perhaps she is repeating the attachment that has governed her all along. The book leaves her aboard the train before those possibilities can be told apart.
Lyuzna is surest when she stands close to Ginny, Jack, and Gloria. A repaired dress carries more feeling than another revelation. The setting has winter salt in its lungs, Ginny’s voice remains agile, and the story seldom lets its heels catch in the carpet. Now and then the snakes, cyanide, and burning mansion crowd Gloria’s simpler offence. She knows which future Ginny wants and sets about making it impossible.
On balance, “Liars in Paradise” earns 79/100 and 3/5 stars. Its atmosphere, velocity, central relationships, and refusal to mistake recognition for escape place it at the top of that range. The overstocked conspiracy, repeated prosecution of Jack, and compressed secondary women keep it from crossing higher.
Shrouded in black, Ginny rides west beside the woman who has seen her most clearly and loved that knowledge badly. The veil lets her pass as someone else while the train carries her farther from every life she chose. Outside, the country opens. Inside the compartment, Gloria is still holding the map.
August 4, 2026
Real Rating: 4.25* of five
The Publisher Says: With five days to clear her partner’s name after a horrific crime, private detective Ginny Dugan infiltrates a cultish secret society on Long Island’s Gold Coast in this champagne-soaked followup to Glitter in the Dark.
New York City, 1925. A night of high-stakes gambling at the Empire Club ends in gunfire and Jack Crawford is found at the center of the carnage—covered in blood, gun in hand. The club’s ruthless owner offers Jack an ultimatum: find the real shooters within five days, or die for their crimes.
Ginny Dugan hasn’t known Jack long, but as his partner in their detective agency, she needs to believe she’s trusted the right man this time. Their only lead is Lila, the sole survivor of the massacre. They follow her to a queer dance hall in Glen Cove, a Long Island Gold Coast town whose glittering summer estates now stand empty in the November chill. Among those who knew Lila, one name keeps surfacing: Echelon, a seductive society where fortune is promised to those who surrender everything. Convinced the answers they seek lie within, Ginny and Jack infiltrate its ranks, where they encounter silent masked attendants, serpents sliding over bare skin, and members who seem to know more than they should—especially about Jack.
As the body count climbs and Jack’s past resurfaces in unsettling ways, Ginny begins to doubt her instincts, her partner, even her own reality. Maybe she was never in control. Maybe she was brought here to play someone else’s game.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: Author Lyuzna's previous book Glitter in the Dark gets a sequel. I was delighted to hearit was coming, I missed the wonderful immersion in the slightly-too-full hot tub of Lyuzna's 1920s glamour
People who want, who yearn for something are the ones easiest to manipulate. Show them a path that guides them through the yearning process and you've got 'em in your conytol. There's always something left behind in achieving a goal. That something is...useful...to someone who wants to control the yearner for fun and profit. And that something needs receipts to be truly, enduringly useful, as well as backed up by demonstrated willingness to use it to harm others (but never me, says the voice of hubris very quietly).
Ginny does not believe any secret is worth dying for, it's what makes her such an effective investigator. She's taken Jack on as her...partner, possibly maybe in more than one sense of the word, this is still in flux...knowing there are secrets in his past, though not what precisely they are. She's confronted with them after she foils a knife attack on a stranger.
Are you feelin' the vibe here? We're in a melodrama. We're heading into the choppy waters off the rocky coast leading to Safe Harbor; our vessel is a bit too small to plow through the waves, maybe the wind's shifting to lift spray into our eyes, where are those damn life jackets anyway? It's a familiar setting in general, but the specifics are what burnish the brasses.
Jack's darkish past is tied to the Big Bad of this story, Dickie Stryker. He's a very familiar character in the twenty-first century: charismatic cult leader, prosperity gospel pusher, blackmailer extraordinaire. Jack's entanglement with him is the ostrich-sized chicken that came home to roost. Ginny's own secrets, the woman who got away for example, are unsurprisingly going to need some dealing with as the waves get fiercer smashing against the rocks outside Safe Harbor. Dickie knows a lot, doesn't have a second's heitation about using what he knows to force Ginny and Jack to deal with his problem or face their vessel being holed (Jack's impending murder) in the heaving story-seas.
Overheated? Yes. Fun? Yep!
It's well-constructed as a mystery. I found not plot holes that didn't feel like secret doors to future installments in the series. I thoroughly enjoyed the bisexual representation...something I don't see too much of in mysteryworld...and appreciated Ginny being drawn as a woman very much in charge of her fate in a time period where that was believable but still very difficult. (Not that it's ever been easy.) It makes the Jazz Age setting have greater depth to see these glistening highlights against the dark, terrible background of Power being flexed.
Echelon, our nexus of Power, is appallingly familiar to readers in 2026. If you read this story and still need a map drawn of how the hideous cult of Power we're watching unravel in 2026, you're probably best suited to religious stories and should not be reading my reviews. It's very much a tropical island transferred to Glen Cove (a lovely place that deserves better). As Author Lyuzna builds out the ugly way the Echelon cultists dig the canals leading to Safe Harbor only through dangerous territiry, the twist and doublebacks and unexpected locks that impede the trip become more and more baroque. The slang of the era is lots of fun to read, making this world feel Other and lived in at the same time. It's a storytelling technique I always like to see. Firefly and Battlestar Galactica and Riddley Walker and A Clockwork Orange have all used the same idea; all are celebrated as successful on a storytelling basis at least in part because the creators were attentive to the details at this high of a level.
I'm not all the way convinced the more melodramatic flourishes are necessarily a good ide in a series. Cecil's knife attack tying back only coincidentally to Jack's secret past is my best not-spoilery examplee (it's literally the beginning of the story). It feels forced; it's there that I suspect the bridge to the period setting could let the author down a bit. This exact storytelling trope is torally of the period we're within. A lot of less talented authors might run with the faux-Golden Age-ness of the story with an intrusive framing device. Author Lyuzna leaves the frame in 2026, tells the story that could best happen in the Jazz Age with a modern societal lens but does not force the action to conform with 2026's expectations. The consequences, the need to obey older cultural norms, are still present.
But there's always a course between the rocks, up the canal, into Safe Harbor at last. Makes for an exciting journey.
The Publisher Says: With five days to clear her partner’s name after a horrific crime, private detective Ginny Dugan infiltrates a cultish secret society on Long Island’s Gold Coast in this champagne-soaked followup to Glitter in the Dark.
New York City, 1925. A night of high-stakes gambling at the Empire Club ends in gunfire and Jack Crawford is found at the center of the carnage—covered in blood, gun in hand. The club’s ruthless owner offers Jack an ultimatum: find the real shooters within five days, or die for their crimes.
Ginny Dugan hasn’t known Jack long, but as his partner in their detective agency, she needs to believe she’s trusted the right man this time. Their only lead is Lila, the sole survivor of the massacre. They follow her to a queer dance hall in Glen Cove, a Long Island Gold Coast town whose glittering summer estates now stand empty in the November chill. Among those who knew Lila, one name keeps surfacing: Echelon, a seductive society where fortune is promised to those who surrender everything. Convinced the answers they seek lie within, Ginny and Jack infiltrate its ranks, where they encounter silent masked attendants, serpents sliding over bare skin, and members who seem to know more than they should—especially about Jack.
As the body count climbs and Jack’s past resurfaces in unsettling ways, Ginny begins to doubt her instincts, her partner, even her own reality. Maybe she was never in control. Maybe she was brought here to play someone else’s game.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: Author Lyuzna's previous book Glitter in the Dark gets a sequel. I was delighted to hearit was coming, I missed the wonderful immersion in the slightly-too-full hot tub of Lyuzna's 1920s glamour
People who want, who yearn for something are the ones easiest to manipulate. Show them a path that guides them through the yearning process and you've got 'em in your conytol. There's always something left behind in achieving a goal. That something is...useful...to someone who wants to control the yearner for fun and profit. And that something needs receipts to be truly, enduringly useful, as well as backed up by demonstrated willingness to use it to harm others (but never me, says the voice of hubris very quietly).
Ginny does not believe any secret is worth dying for, it's what makes her such an effective investigator. She's taken Jack on as her...partner, possibly maybe in more than one sense of the word, this is still in flux...knowing there are secrets in his past, though not what precisely they are. She's confronted with them after she foils a knife attack on a stranger.
Are you feelin' the vibe here? We're in a melodrama. We're heading into the choppy waters off the rocky coast leading to Safe Harbor; our vessel is a bit too small to plow through the waves, maybe the wind's shifting to lift spray into our eyes, where are those damn life jackets anyway? It's a familiar setting in general, but the specifics are what burnish the brasses.
Jack's darkish past is tied to the Big Bad of this story, Dickie Stryker. He's a very familiar character in the twenty-first century: charismatic cult leader, prosperity gospel pusher, blackmailer extraordinaire. Jack's entanglement with him is the ostrich-sized chicken that came home to roost. Ginny's own secrets, the woman who got away for example, are unsurprisingly going to need some dealing with as the waves get fiercer smashing against the rocks outside Safe Harbor. Dickie knows a lot, doesn't have a second's heitation about using what he knows to force Ginny and Jack to deal with his problem or face their vessel being holed (Jack's impending murder) in the heaving story-seas.
Overheated? Yes. Fun? Yep!
It's well-constructed as a mystery. I found not plot holes that didn't feel like secret doors to future installments in the series. I thoroughly enjoyed the bisexual representation...something I don't see too much of in mysteryworld...and appreciated Ginny being drawn as a woman very much in charge of her fate in a time period where that was believable but still very difficult. (Not that it's ever been easy.) It makes the Jazz Age setting have greater depth to see these glistening highlights against the dark, terrible background of Power being flexed.
Echelon, our nexus of Power, is appallingly familiar to readers in 2026. If you read this story and still need a map drawn of how the hideous cult of Power we're watching unravel in 2026, you're probably best suited to religious stories and should not be reading my reviews. It's very much a tropical island transferred to Glen Cove (a lovely place that deserves better). As Author Lyuzna builds out the ugly way the Echelon cultists dig the canals leading to Safe Harbor only through dangerous territiry, the twist and doublebacks and unexpected locks that impede the trip become more and more baroque. The slang of the era is lots of fun to read, making this world feel Other and lived in at the same time. It's a storytelling technique I always like to see. Firefly and Battlestar Galactica and Riddley Walker and A Clockwork Orange have all used the same idea; all are celebrated as successful on a storytelling basis at least in part because the creators were attentive to the details at this high of a level.
I'm not all the way convinced the more melodramatic flourishes are necessarily a good ide in a series. Cecil's knife attack tying back only coincidentally to Jack's secret past is my best not-spoilery examplee (it's literally the beginning of the story). It feels forced; it's there that I suspect the bridge to the period setting could let the author down a bit. This exact storytelling trope is torally of the period we're within. A lot of less talented authors might run with the faux-Golden Age-ness of the story with an intrusive framing device. Author Lyuzna leaves the frame in 2026, tells the story that could best happen in the Jazz Age with a modern societal lens but does not force the action to conform with 2026's expectations. The consequences, the need to obey older cultural norms, are still present.
But there's always a course between the rocks, up the canal, into Safe Harbor at last. Makes for an exciting journey.
July 30, 2026
Liars in Paradise by Olesya Lyuzna🥂🔪✨
★★★☆☆ 3/5 stars
Thank you to the author, NetGalley, and The Mysterious Press for the ALC! 🎧
📖 Summary: Set in 1920s New York, Liars in Paradise follows private detective Ginny Dugan as she races to clear her partner Jack's name after he's accused of a brutal massacre. Her investigation leads her into a wealthy, secretive cult where manipulation, gaslighting, and buried secrets make it impossible to know who can be trusted.🕵🏻♀️
💭 My Thoughts: This was a solid queer historical mystery with a creepy cult at its center. The mystery kept me interested enough that I wanted to see how everything would unfold, even if I wasn't completely hooked. It was also a pretty quick audiobook, which made it easy to keep listening.🔎
The cult elements were definitely my favorite part. The manipulation, gaslighting, and psychological games created an unsettling atmosphere that fit the story well. It honestly reminded me of one of those detective mystery games where you're collecting clues and trying to figure out who's lying.
I also couldn't stop laughing at the very obvious Notebook moment... "I wrote you a letter every day for a year." 😂 Okay noah.
I do think I would've been more invested in the characters if I'd read the first book in the series. Since I jumped in with book two, I felt a little disconnected from Ginny and Jack's relationship, which made some of the emotional moments fall a bit flat for me.
Overall, this was a decent mystery with cult vibes, murder, twists, and plenty of manipulation. If you enjoy historical mysteries with queer representation ans morally gray characters, this one is worth checking out.🐍🖤🥀🃏
★★★☆☆ 3/5 stars
Thank you to the author, NetGalley, and The Mysterious Press for the ALC! 🎧
📖 Summary: Set in 1920s New York, Liars in Paradise follows private detective Ginny Dugan as she races to clear her partner Jack's name after he's accused of a brutal massacre. Her investigation leads her into a wealthy, secretive cult where manipulation, gaslighting, and buried secrets make it impossible to know who can be trusted.🕵🏻♀️
💭 My Thoughts: This was a solid queer historical mystery with a creepy cult at its center. The mystery kept me interested enough that I wanted to see how everything would unfold, even if I wasn't completely hooked. It was also a pretty quick audiobook, which made it easy to keep listening.🔎
The cult elements were definitely my favorite part. The manipulation, gaslighting, and psychological games created an unsettling atmosphere that fit the story well. It honestly reminded me of one of those detective mystery games where you're collecting clues and trying to figure out who's lying.
I also couldn't stop laughing at the very obvious Notebook moment... "I wrote you a letter every day for a year." 😂 Okay noah.
I do think I would've been more invested in the characters if I'd read the first book in the series. Since I jumped in with book two, I felt a little disconnected from Ginny and Jack's relationship, which made some of the emotional moments fall a bit flat for me.
Overall, this was a decent mystery with cult vibes, murder, twists, and plenty of manipulation. If you enjoy historical mysteries with queer representation ans morally gray characters, this one is worth checking out.🐍🖤🥀🃏
August 5, 2026
I am so incredibly grateful for the opportunity to have received an advanced listener copy of Liars In Paradise from the author and Libro.fm! 🫶
It’s time to give a standing ovation to Liars In Paradise because this book hooked me in from the start and I could not put this book down since I loved it that much! 🥹🖤🕵️♀️ If you love the vibes of The Great Gatsby and And Then There Were None and mixed them together that is this book in a nutshell and I am so beyond obsessed! 🫶
What would you do if your partner in the detective agency happens to be in the center of a major incident and the club’s owner gives him the chance to either find out who really did it in 5 days or ☠️? Ginny and Jack do everything to figure out the mystery including doing what they have to do to try to get themselves into a secret society called Echelon. I will say nothing more because you need to read this to find out and my lips are sealed! 🤐 I listened to the audiobook of this and Amber Dekkers did such an incredible job bringing all of the characters to life! 🎧 I also can’t even begin to count how many theories I had while reading this because I had so many and the theories kept changing when I found out more details! 🤔🔍 Ginny truly is such a fun character and something I love about her is how unpredictable. I never knew what she was going to do and it had me turning the pages like I would eating a bowl of buttered popcorn! 🍿
If you love The Great Gatsby meets And Then There Were None, and mystery novels then this is the book for you! 🫶
It’s time to give a standing ovation to Liars In Paradise because this book hooked me in from the start and I could not put this book down since I loved it that much! 🥹🖤🕵️♀️ If you love the vibes of The Great Gatsby and And Then There Were None and mixed them together that is this book in a nutshell and I am so beyond obsessed! 🫶
What would you do if your partner in the detective agency happens to be in the center of a major incident and the club’s owner gives him the chance to either find out who really did it in 5 days or ☠️? Ginny and Jack do everything to figure out the mystery including doing what they have to do to try to get themselves into a secret society called Echelon. I will say nothing more because you need to read this to find out and my lips are sealed! 🤐 I listened to the audiobook of this and Amber Dekkers did such an incredible job bringing all of the characters to life! 🎧 I also can’t even begin to count how many theories I had while reading this because I had so many and the theories kept changing when I found out more details! 🤔🔍 Ginny truly is such a fun character and something I love about her is how unpredictable. I never knew what she was going to do and it had me turning the pages like I would eating a bowl of buttered popcorn! 🍿
If you love The Great Gatsby meets And Then There Were None, and mystery novels then this is the book for you! 🫶
August 10, 2026
Thank you netgalley for the audiobook arc in exchange of an honest review
Jack Crawford is found at the center of the carnage covered in blood, gun in hand. The club’s ruthless owner offers Jack and his partner Ginny an ultimatum: find the real shooters within five days, or die for their crimes.
I thought this book was very good at creating an interesting atmospheric world set in the 1920s and I found Ginny a compelling character and enjoyed the twist and turns of this who dunnit in the underbelly of the elites.
I will say however this book is less about finding who framed Ginny’s partner jack, and more about discovering the true intentions of the cult echelon at times I forgot we were even trying to find the person responsible for the night club murders. But I found the cult dynamics very compelling so I didn’t mind the stories deviations I just wish we had more of the cult and less of The Who dunnit.
My one critique of this book is I don’t really feel compelled by any of the romance in this book, I couldn’t possibly tell you why Ginny suddenly wants to save jack because she loves him? And why I feel there were hints of buddy queer romance with Ginny they fell flat for me.
Overall I found myself entertained and enjoyed the mysteries of the story and would recommend this to other readers searching for a good historic mystery novel.
Jack Crawford is found at the center of the carnage covered in blood, gun in hand. The club’s ruthless owner offers Jack and his partner Ginny an ultimatum: find the real shooters within five days, or die for their crimes.
I thought this book was very good at creating an interesting atmospheric world set in the 1920s and I found Ginny a compelling character and enjoyed the twist and turns of this who dunnit in the underbelly of the elites.
I will say however this book is less about finding who framed Ginny’s partner jack, and more about discovering the true intentions of the cult echelon at times I forgot we were even trying to find the person responsible for the night club murders. But I found the cult dynamics very compelling so I didn’t mind the stories deviations I just wish we had more of the cult and less of The Who dunnit.
My one critique of this book is I don’t really feel compelled by any of the romance in this book, I couldn’t possibly tell you why Ginny suddenly wants to save jack because she loves him? And why I feel there were hints of buddy queer romance with Ginny they fell flat for me.
Overall I found myself entertained and enjoyed the mysteries of the story and would recommend this to other readers searching for a good historic mystery novel.
August 11, 2026
Entire review @JoyfullyJay.com
2.75⭐️
As a lover of early cinema and ‘70s noir, the premise of Liars in Paradise attracted me immediately; unfortunately, the execution didn’t live up to its promise. The writing and story are solid enough that I wasn’t bored per se, but I was disinterested. I did enjoy the spiritualism and mesmerism aspect. Blackwell is the epitome of animal magnetism. . .
Ginny is also surprisingly malleable and almost naïve in how quickly she jumps to conclusions or believes people, and it isn’t simply Echelon’s influence. Partly in true noir fashion, her libido is a distraction. She’s hot for/enamored of three different people, so props for some chaotic bi energy. . .
Duality and hidden darkness are motifs, and the fact that Ginny laments her own darkness, but is oft surprised and disturbed when Jack shows similar sides, adds to the repetitiousness of Ginny also lamenting Gloria’s absence.
I was also disappointed that much of the historical atmosphere in Lyuzna’s debut is lacking. . . the early exploration of Echelon is engaging, but its appeal fizzles out. . . . It’s all reminiscent of many a lovely gothic novel, but lacks their allure and dampens the sense of stakes and tension. . .
2.75⭐️
As a lover of early cinema and ‘70s noir, the premise of Liars in Paradise attracted me immediately; unfortunately, the execution didn’t live up to its promise. The writing and story are solid enough that I wasn’t bored per se, but I was disinterested. I did enjoy the spiritualism and mesmerism aspect. Blackwell is the epitome of animal magnetism. . .
Ginny is also surprisingly malleable and almost naïve in how quickly she jumps to conclusions or believes people, and it isn’t simply Echelon’s influence. Partly in true noir fashion, her libido is a distraction. She’s hot for/enamored of three different people, so props for some chaotic bi energy. . .
Duality and hidden darkness are motifs, and the fact that Ginny laments her own darkness, but is oft surprised and disturbed when Jack shows similar sides, adds to the repetitiousness of Ginny also lamenting Gloria’s absence.
I was also disappointed that much of the historical atmosphere in Lyuzna’s debut is lacking. . . the early exploration of Echelon is engaging, but its appeal fizzles out. . . . It’s all reminiscent of many a lovely gothic novel, but lacks their allure and dampens the sense of stakes and tension. . .
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
I absolutely adored the first in this series, Glitter in the Dark, so I was so excited to dive back into Ginny's world!
In this second installment, Ginny finds herself questioning her PI partner Jack, when he is accused of a massacre at his old haunt The Empire Club. Dinny and Jack trace the only survivor of the attack all the way back to a town on Long Island, where they are pulled into a New Age-y organization promising to fulfill their members' dreams through the power of positive thinking.
Having just read a non-fiction book that covered how pyramid schemes have been thriving in the US as far back as the 1900s, it was perfect timing to experience this fictional story from the same time period, with the same tricks. It was fascinating to see how even 100 years ago, the manipulative nature of MLMs was already alive and thriving.
Lyuzna continues her deeply immersive storytelling that sets readers firmly in New York of the past, with even more suspenseful plotting and sexy rendevouz. Fans of mysterious historical fiction, bisexual heroines and/or 1920s NYC will love this one!
This was my first time with Amber Dekkers as a narrator, and I loved how she brought this story and era to life!
In this second installment, Ginny finds herself questioning her PI partner Jack, when he is accused of a massacre at his old haunt The Empire Club. Dinny and Jack trace the only survivor of the attack all the way back to a town on Long Island, where they are pulled into a New Age-y organization promising to fulfill their members' dreams through the power of positive thinking.
Having just read a non-fiction book that covered how pyramid schemes have been thriving in the US as far back as the 1900s, it was perfect timing to experience this fictional story from the same time period, with the same tricks. It was fascinating to see how even 100 years ago, the manipulative nature of MLMs was already alive and thriving.
Lyuzna continues her deeply immersive storytelling that sets readers firmly in New York of the past, with even more suspenseful plotting and sexy rendevouz. Fans of mysterious historical fiction, bisexual heroines and/or 1920s NYC will love this one!
This was my first time with Amber Dekkers as a narrator, and I loved how she brought this story and era to life!
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
A thrilling 1925 New York City mystery that had me hooked from the very first chapter! A night of high-stakes gambling at the Empire Club ends in a brutal massacre, sending the investigation down a dangerous path where no one can be trusted. The twists, suspense, and mysterious organization kept me guessing until the end, and the narrator brought the atmosphere and characters vividly to life. If you love historical mysteries packed with intrigue, this audiobook is well worth a listen!
Release date is 08 / 04 / 2026
Thank you NetGalley and RBMedia for the Audiobook.
Release date is 08 / 04 / 2026
Thank you NetGalley and RBMedia for the Audiobook.
September 14, 2026
3.5 stars
I enjoyed listening to this book. The Agatha Christie and sapphic Great Gatsby vibes abounded. Detective partners Ginny & Jack are back and racing against the clock to save Jack’s life. They need to infiltrate a secret society to clear Jack’s name. The mystery was well handled. I found it interesting and didn’t guess the ending! Looking forward to the next installment.
*Thanks to Highbridge Audio & NetGalley for the free copy
I enjoyed listening to this book. The Agatha Christie and sapphic Great Gatsby vibes abounded. Detective partners Ginny & Jack are back and racing against the clock to save Jack’s life. They need to infiltrate a secret society to clear Jack’s name. The mystery was well handled. I found it interesting and didn’t guess the ending! Looking forward to the next installment.
*Thanks to Highbridge Audio & NetGalley for the free copy
August 4, 2026
A Joyfully Jay review.
3.25 stars
Liars in Paradise is the second book in the Ginny Dugan Mysteries series and contains spoilers for book one, Glitter in the Dark.
Read Jovan’s review in its entirety here.
3.25 stars
Liars in Paradise is the second book in the Ginny Dugan Mysteries series and contains spoilers for book one, Glitter in the Dark.
Read Jovan’s review in its entirety here.
August 24, 2026
I had the audiobook- I think with this story I might have enjoyed reading the book more. Personal preference on narration. The sound quality was not great.
I had a hard time following along. Ginny is finding Jack or finding out who framed Jack? I will give it another go when I can read it.
Thank you netgalley for the arc audiobook.
I had a hard time following along. Ginny is finding Jack or finding out who framed Jack? I will give it another go when I can read it.
Thank you netgalley for the arc audiobook.
Review of advance copy received from Author
Lyrical, twisted, and utterly hypnotic, I found this novel completely surreal and impossible to put down! As with Glitter in the Dark, Olesya Lyuzna’s wit, world-building, and devotion to the era and her characters are bar none. My time spent with Ginny felt like paradise indeed!
August 13, 2026
Not my cup of tea
I thought it was going to be an actual mystery… Jack & Ginny detective agency… Far from it. I found there was just too much going on. The writing was very good, but the story, not so much.
I thought it was going to be an actual mystery… Jack & Ginny detective agency… Far from it. I found there was just too much going on. The writing was very good, but the story, not so much.
November 6, 2025
call me biased but this book is a total banger.........
Review of advance copy received from Author
incredible work. Lyuzna crafts such compelling characters that build such intricates stories. LIARS IN PARADISE is sexy and tense, and I would follow Ginny anywhere, even on her worst day.
August 10, 2026
The best book by Lyuzna! Captivating plot and lots of twists, highly recommended!
September 15, 2026
Cliffhanger! I hope there are more volumes.
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