What do you think?
Rate this book
Detectives in Love
I’m Newt Doherty—half of Partners-in-Crime, the detective agency I built with Xavier Ormond, the infuriating genius who once dragged me out of a serial killer’s den and saved my life. We live together (for efficiency). We solve murders (for fun and bills).
We're not dating.
Try telling that to Shorewitch’s tabloids.
Now every corner hides a camera, every headline swears we’re sleeping together, and every “no comment” sounds like a confession. Which would almost be fine—except I’m hopelessly in love with Xavier, and we’re knee-deep in two murder cases, one with a killer who’s always a step ahead.
The city wants a scandal. The killer wants silence. And I have to find out what happened between Xavier and me on the drunken night I can’t remember—before someone writes our final headline.
Detectives in Love is a queer romantic mystery/thriller
🩵Slow-burn friends to lovers
🩵Found family
🩵Grumpy × sunshine(ish)
🩵Tabloid chaos & forced public proximity
🩵Two tangled murders
🩵Hurt/comfort
Content on-page violence (stabbing/shooting), media harassment, adult language, mutual pining, explicit sex scenes.
We're not dating.
Try telling that to Shorewitch’s tabloids.
Now every corner hides a camera, every headline swears we’re sleeping together, and every “no comment” sounds like a confession. Which would almost be fine—except I’m hopelessly in love with Xavier, and we’re knee-deep in two murder cases, one with a killer who’s always a step ahead.
The city wants a scandal. The killer wants silence. And I have to find out what happened between Xavier and me on the drunken night I can’t remember—before someone writes our final headline.
Detectives in Love is a queer romantic mystery/thriller
🩵Slow-burn friends to lovers
🩵Found family
🩵Grumpy × sunshine(ish)
🩵Tabloid chaos & forced public proximity
🩵Two tangled murders
🩵Hurt/comfort
Content on-page violence (stabbing/shooting), media harassment, adult language, mutual pining, explicit sex scenes.
469 pages, Paperback
Published October 29, 2025
6 people are currently reading
169 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
November 16, 2025
3.75 stars
This was pretty frustrating at times but I was invested in the characters. I wanted less miscommunication and more working together on both their cases and love life.
This was a new author for me so I wasn’t used to their writing style. Sometimes it flowed nicely and others it felt a bit choppy and repetitive. The cases were a bit of a mess and I wouldn’t describe this as a true detective story. The focus was more on the relationship between Newt and Xavier.
Where did this take place? I have no idea! Was it in England or the U.S.? I like to know these things but I still have no clue.
I wouldn’t mind reading more of this couple, maybe with both POV’s and a solid case for them to solve.
This was pretty frustrating at times but I was invested in the characters. I wanted less miscommunication and more working together on both their cases and love life.
This was a new author for me so I wasn’t used to their writing style. Sometimes it flowed nicely and others it felt a bit choppy and repetitive. The cases were a bit of a mess and I wouldn’t describe this as a true detective story. The focus was more on the relationship between Newt and Xavier.
Where did this take place? I have no idea! Was it in England or the U.S.? I like to know these things but I still have no clue.
I wouldn’t mind reading more of this couple, maybe with both POV’s and a solid case for them to solve.
January 14, 2026
Idk 🤷🏻♀️ cute but ...
December 3, 2025
This should not be encouraged. Where does this take place? What year? How is it that two private detectives are major news? Why would their sex life be interesting to the general public? How do they make any money to live? How are they detectives while not at any time do they ask relevant questions or make a connection? Why doesn't anything make a speck of sense?
January 1, 2026
little bit sexy but super cute and i was puzzling to the end
December 12, 2025
I found out way too late that the author used AI graphics and AI ghostwriting.
January 17, 2026
Beyond all the things that are fundamentally wrong with the plot (which I’ll get into in more detail later), there are a few elements that are so absurd I honestly have no words:
1. They’re supposedly detectives, yet they don’t even have a car and rely on taxis to get from place to place. What?
2. Detectives without weapons (very logical…).
3. The whole press obsession with them — lol, what on earth? Why would anyone care?
4. Their interaction with the police, who supposedly supply them with work, is completely unprofessional.
5. The amount of illegal behavior they just shrug off: wiretapping and cameras in their home, tracking their location with an device, breaking into places illegally, and literally stealing from a victim’s family.
Honestly, any one of these points alone would be enough to make me quit.
And that’s before getting into the bigger
structural problems.
I honestly couldn’t understand this book at all. The entire storyline is messy and unclear, and I’ll explain why.
Let’s start with how they meet. Supposedly, they met when Newt was kidnapped and Xavier saved him — but is that ever explained? No. Do they explain how they became partners who live together? Also no. (At least not until a bit past the middle of the book.) By that point it’s already weird and gives no real background at all.
Now let’s talk about their “partnership.” Professionally? Xav does everything alone, from planning to execution, and Newt is basically just there in the background to listen to the conclusions.
Even if we put that aside for a moment (even though it’s completely ridiculous), on a personal level they know absolutely nothing about each other — despite supposedly being partners for a year and a half and living together. All their interactions are passive-aggressive. They behave more like a pair of teenagers in a toxic relationship than two grown men who are friends and colleagues.
After every one of their “fights,” I found myself doing an involuntary eye-roll.
And now for the “mystery thriller” plot — hahaha, I made myself laugh. Nothing interesting or clever actually happens here.
On top of all that, to really seal the book’s badness, the side characters are terribly written, with not a single drop of real authorial investment.
I stopped reading at around 60%, and I honestly wonder why it took me so long to quit.
1. They’re supposedly detectives, yet they don’t even have a car and rely on taxis to get from place to place. What?
2. Detectives without weapons (very logical…).
3. The whole press obsession with them — lol, what on earth? Why would anyone care?
4. Their interaction with the police, who supposedly supply them with work, is completely unprofessional.
5. The amount of illegal behavior they just shrug off: wiretapping and cameras in their home, tracking their location with an device, breaking into places illegally, and literally stealing from a victim’s family.
Honestly, any one of these points alone would be enough to make me quit.
And that’s before getting into the bigger
structural problems.
I honestly couldn’t understand this book at all. The entire storyline is messy and unclear, and I’ll explain why.
Let’s start with how they meet. Supposedly, they met when Newt was kidnapped and Xavier saved him — but is that ever explained? No. Do they explain how they became partners who live together? Also no. (At least not until a bit past the middle of the book.) By that point it’s already weird and gives no real background at all.
Now let’s talk about their “partnership.” Professionally? Xav does everything alone, from planning to execution, and Newt is basically just there in the background to listen to the conclusions.
Even if we put that aside for a moment (even though it’s completely ridiculous), on a personal level they know absolutely nothing about each other — despite supposedly being partners for a year and a half and living together. All their interactions are passive-aggressive. They behave more like a pair of teenagers in a toxic relationship than two grown men who are friends and colleagues.
After every one of their “fights,” I found myself doing an involuntary eye-roll.
And now for the “mystery thriller” plot — hahaha, I made myself laugh. Nothing interesting or clever actually happens here.
On top of all that, to really seal the book’s badness, the side characters are terribly written, with not a single drop of real authorial investment.
I stopped reading at around 60%, and I honestly wonder why it took me so long to quit.
December 31, 2025
Interesting enough premise, poor execution on both the detective and the romance front.
The plot is fairly disjointed; we're dropped in the middle of a situation that does look like something that should have been the first book and frankly, at least for the sake of romance, this could have been a trilogy. Mutual pinning is bad enough but the way they go from just partners to partners in both senses of the word is so... straight guys. Who wants to talk about feelings when you can misunderstand every talk and avoid talking about all the elephants in the room until such talk even comes to pass. Their connection is there for me, but I don't exactly know why: the love interest (for all intents and purposes, since it's single POV) is either stone cold or soft and open. That's not a rollercoaster but a whiplash. The MC tries to be the... I feel like I've seen several versions of this character before, when people naturally gravitate towards him while he considers himself pretty introverted. The tall, dark and broody love interest is not any more original and his semi-unique features are all negative - frustrating and annoying. You know you've got a dozy when the nice parts are supposed to make the jerk parts better, because being nice 10% of the time in the privacy of your room is all the scraps he needs to be in love.
The lack of a more organised (independent detectives) lives who live together was supposed to be interesting but one of them played the Sherlock and took out brilliant deductions out of thin air so you didn't feel like part of the investigation but an audience to be dazzled by his wit - except his wit being one of his two redeeming qualities? Real winner, right here.
I finished the book, there was something that kept me going but that's about as positive as I can make this review.
The plot is fairly disjointed; we're dropped in the middle of a situation that does look like something that should have been the first book and frankly, at least for the sake of romance, this could have been a trilogy. Mutual pinning is bad enough but the way they go from just partners to partners in both senses of the word is so... straight guys. Who wants to talk about feelings when you can misunderstand every talk and avoid talking about all the elephants in the room until such talk even comes to pass. Their connection is there for me, but I don't exactly know why: the love interest (for all intents and purposes, since it's single POV) is either stone cold or soft and open. That's not a rollercoaster but a whiplash. The MC tries to be the... I feel like I've seen several versions of this character before, when people naturally gravitate towards him while he considers himself pretty introverted. The tall, dark and broody love interest is not any more original and his semi-unique features are all negative - frustrating and annoying. You know you've got a dozy when the nice parts are supposed to make the jerk parts better, because being nice 10% of the time in the privacy of your room is all the scraps he needs to be in love.
The lack of a more organised (independent detectives) lives who live together was supposed to be interesting but one of them played the Sherlock and took out brilliant deductions out of thin air so you didn't feel like part of the investigation but an audience to be dazzled by his wit - except his wit being one of his two redeeming qualities? Real winner, right here.
I finished the book, there was something that kept me going but that's about as positive as I can make this review.
November 1, 2025
Deterctives in Love is a fast-paced, trope-loving detective drama that delivers both emotional tension and crime-solving thrills in equal measure. At the heart of the story are Newt and Xavier, two wildly different detectives whose chemistry crackles through every scene. Newt, the impulsive, emotionally driven half of the duo, brings heart and chaos to the agency. His lingering trauma from a near-fatal encounter with a serial killer—and his unspoken love for Xavier—adds layers of vulnerability beneath his bravado. Xavier, the cerebral mastermind, is all logic and restraint. His lack of emotional reciprocity and social life makes him a fascinating enigma, especially as Newt’s feelings simmer just beneath the surface. The dynamic between them is electric: a classic odd-couple pairing with a twist of unrequited love and life-or-death stakes. Their relationship is further complicated by Xavier’s billionaire uncle, whose meddling adds a delicious layer of intrigue and sabotage. A delightful romp with heart, brains, and just enough angst to keep you hooked. If you love crime-solving duos with complicated feelings and even more complicated cases, this one’s for you.
November 9, 2025
DNF @ 70%
I'm 100% sure this is a repurposed Sherlock fanfic. I still tried to stick it out, even though this story started off in the middle of...something. The changed information left more gaps, but sounded more interesting than what actually played out in the book.
- John's/Newt's battle wound was replaced with a scar from and attempted vivisection by a serial killer. Why aren't we following THAT storyline? It sounds loads better than discovering the mystery of the meat popsicle.
- Sherlock's/Xavier's overbearing brother was replaced by an overbearing uncle. Why is the uncle so involved in Xavier's life like a big brother would be? Why aren't we exploring their relationship? Why isn't Newt asking questions about it?
Everyone else just had name swaps. Even John's room is still upstairs. Though this would have been a thrilling read as fanfiction, as a book, there are gaping holes in the storyline that can't be covered by just switching names and changing jobs of characters.
I'm 100% sure this is a repurposed Sherlock fanfic. I still tried to stick it out, even though this story started off in the middle of...something. The changed information left more gaps, but sounded more interesting than what actually played out in the book.
- John's/Newt's battle wound was replaced with a scar from and attempted vivisection by a serial killer. Why aren't we following THAT storyline? It sounds loads better than discovering the mystery of the meat popsicle.
- Sherlock's/Xavier's overbearing brother was replaced by an overbearing uncle. Why is the uncle so involved in Xavier's life like a big brother would be? Why aren't we exploring their relationship? Why isn't Newt asking questions about it?
Everyone else just had name swaps. Even John's room is still upstairs. Though this would have been a thrilling read as fanfiction, as a book, there are gaping holes in the storyline that can't be covered by just switching names and changing jobs of characters.
October 31, 2025
Newt and Xavier are the two Detectives that make up Partners in Crime detective agency. Xaviers is the genius who puts much thought into crime solving. Newt is more of a seat of the pants kind of guy. Xavier save Newt at the last minute from a serial killer and Newt still carries the scars from hundreds of knife cuts. Since then, Newt has been in love with Xavier, but Xavier doesn’t seem to return his feelings. Of course, he doesn’t seem to have any other social life either. Xavier’s billionaire uncle is on a mission to keep Newt and Xavier apart. Oh, and they have crimes to solve - handouts from the local police captain and a murder that they have no permission to pursue. Just a normal week at Partners in Crime.
This was a delightful romp that hit so very many tropes.
This was a delightful romp that hit so very many tropes.
November 12, 2025
'Does Xavier see it? Does he know how far gone I am for him? He must. But at least he has the decency to pretend he doesn’t. The whole world, though? They’re not going to be so kind to me.'
I really enjoyed this book. It was a fun fast-paced romance with suspense and an opposites attract duo. Good world building and wonderful characters. I loved both Newt and Xavier. I loved the dynamic between them and the way their relationship developed. I felt bad for them with the publicity, but also kind of love it, because I'd ship them, too, and it amuses me how invested headlines are in them. Though not everyone wants them together. There's also cases they have to solve, and I was engrossed in their story. 5 stars
I really enjoyed this book. It was a fun fast-paced romance with suspense and an opposites attract duo. Good world building and wonderful characters. I loved both Newt and Xavier. I loved the dynamic between them and the way their relationship developed. I felt bad for them with the publicity, but also kind of love it, because I'd ship them, too, and it amuses me how invested headlines are in them. Though not everyone wants them together. There's also cases they have to solve, and I was engrossed in their story. 5 stars
November 3, 2025
Detectives in Love is about Newt and Xavier, they have a detective agency together and when tabloids starts to write that they are also in a relationship. At top of that they have two murders to solve.
I love a detective stories, so this was so my book. I liked the story and the characters, it was very well written and there was a very good world building.
There was a suspense and action. I highly recommend this book.
-----------------------------------------------------
I received a copy of this book, and this is my honest review
I love a detective stories, so this was so my book. I liked the story and the characters, it was very well written and there was a very good world building.
There was a suspense and action. I highly recommend this book.
-----------------------------------------------------
I received a copy of this book, and this is my honest review
November 2, 2025
I really enjoyed this book it’s called Detectives in Love and is about Newt and Xavier who run the Partners in Crime detective agency, their story covers a lot of tropes and it kept my attention from the beginning to the end. It is definitely a story worth a read.
November 5, 2025
Delightful!
November 8, 2025
where are all the editors do they not take on m/m jobs anymore what’s going on
January 1, 2026
Just look at me smiling like an idiot while I finish this book in two days
January 19, 2026
3.75⭐️
Xavier is such a mystery but a sweet ass guy
Xavier is such a mystery but a sweet ass guy
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews