Emily: Queer Girl Book Club is back in action, and this time we’re talking about the mystery novel The Verifiers by Jane Pek. The Verifiers is Jane Pek’s debut novel, introducing amateur sleuth Claudia Lin. Claudia is a mystery novel-loving twenty-something who's just been recruited by Veracity, a referral-only online dating detective agency. But when one of the agency’s clients goes missing, Claudia finds herself breaking the rules to dive deep into the secret world of people’s online lives and corporate deceit.

Some spoilers to follow.

I chose this book because I’d heard good things about it, and the character of Claudia seemed interesting to me. It seems like this book is going to be the first in a series. There’s a second novel, The Rivals, listed on Goodreads, but no details have been released yet. We can get into that later.

For now, let’s talk about this book. And since Claudia as a character is such a big part of the story, let’s talk about her first. Kelli, what did you think of Claudia?

Kelli: Claudia was, as you said, interesting. Did I like her? I’m not sure. Lol. 

Something I struggled with reading this book which is something that I think I often struggle with when it comes to amateur sleuthing is like … why are you doing this? It’s so hard for me to relate to putting that much time and energy and getting to a point where I’m risking my own physical safety and my job just because I want to find out “the truth” about something. We learn that Claudia loves mystery novels, and getting to the bottom of shit is a driving force for her character, but some of the stuff she does to achieve her goal was bizarre and frankly annoying to me. So while I was curious about why exactly she was doing all of this, I was also like, CAN YOU STOP?

I did really enjoy her relationship with her siblings. We were texting and we talked a little about how this book feels like it has several different sections to it, and I definitely perked up whenever we got to the ‘dysfunctional family’ parts. I enjoyed watching these very different siblings interact with each other and their mom, especially given what we learn about their mom and her past—she left Charles and Coraline to go home, and when she came back she had a whole new baby, Claudia.

How did you feel about the family stuff? How about how it worked (or didn’t) with the rest of the novel?

Emily: I really enjoyed the family stuff and the character building there. And I honestly would’ve been happy if this was just a book about that and not all the other stuff. Sometimes I did wonder how the mystery, the dating app, and the family stuff all fit together. I guess there was that connection with Claudia’s brother Charles. Charles’ occupation gave him the opportunity to mansplain dating algorithms to Claudia, which was more for the benefit of the reader than for Claudia. And I guess Coraline was able to get Claudia into that gala at the end. I did find it sweet that Coraline was so willing to help her sister even though she wasn’t quite sure why Claudia wanted to go to this gala or what she was up to. Other than that? Not sure how it all fits. Also, I hate the name Coraline because I’m not going to not think of Neil Gaiman. 

While we’re on the subject of Claudia as a character and her family, we also need to talk about the queer rep in this novel. As you might have guessed, reader, Claudia is a lesbian. But she’s not entirely out of the closet. Oh, and her roommate is gay and dates around a lot. This is queer girl book club, after all. So what did you think about the queer girl rep in this book?

Kelli: I was not suitably impressed, to be honest. This is a personal preference, but when I’m reading a book with a queer person in it and their queerness is a topic that is focused on, I do want to see them fuck. I mean, let’s be real: I always want the characters I’m reading about to fuck. I’m a romantic at heart, what can I say? But I found it especially odd that Claudia only had one sexual encounter when sooo much of this book is about dating and romance. 

Now that you say there’s going to be a sequel, which I didn’t know before, it makes a little bit more sense to me, because there’s definitely something going on between Claudia and her boss, Becks (which is definitely inappropriate which I feel like I have to say since we were just texting about the Try Guys drama…). It’s very faintly hinted at here and I would’ve liked to see more of it, but If this is going to be a series, I can see why Pek wants to do a slow burn for that relationship, since it’s sort of an enemies-to-lovers vibe.

Regardless, I still would’ve liked to see a little more romance here. And this isn’t to say that every book about a queer character needs to have romance in it, but given the subject matter of this book and the fact that it’s sort of like… mystery/action/adventure in some ways, I think a more significant romance subplot would have done a lot. Plus, there’s quite a bit of this that I think we could’ve lost.

Emily: I totally agree. I don’t really know how to put this into words, but there’s something that feels a little bit… off to me about having a queer character who basically isn’t dating because she’s queer. I know Claudia’s reasonings are probably more complicated than that, but basically, it feels like everyone else in the book is dating and dating a lot, so the fact that Claudia isn’t sticks out and makes her seem like this very old school 90s version of queer characters in fiction that were just super sexless. If that makes sense. 

Kelli: It does make sense. Also, her gay cis male roommate gets to date and have all the sex he wants, which also feels very 90s. I just wanted more for her.

Emily: We do get one little glimmer of hope at the end for Claudia. She is not out to her mom, but at the end of the book, Claudia’s mom tells her that if she can’t find a “nice, Chinese boy” then at least she better find someone who is two out of the three. Claudia sees this as her mom telling her that she knows Claudia is gay, and she’s ok with it (so long as she finds someone nice and Chinese). I thought this was sweet (again focused on the family stuff and that stuff working the best for me), and makes me hopeful for what will happen for Claudia in upcoming novels.

Kelli: So, let’s talk about the mystery. Sarah is a woman who comes to Veracity pretending to be her twin sister, Iris, which we only find out once Sarah has died under mysterious circumstances. The mystery is twofold: 1) what was Sarah really trying to find out through Veracity, and 2) did someone kill her? Also who, so I guess that’s threefold.

Did you enjoy the mystery aspect of the novel?

Emily: So I will say that unlike you, I do enjoy an amateur sleuth and I never question why they’re doing what they’re doing because I guess I’m just a nosy ass bitch. I would want to know all the details too. Haha. 

At the beginning, I will say I was intrigued by the mystery, but as the story went on, it started to feel like mystery was just this vehicle for Jane Pek to explore this concept she has about online dating and AIs on dating apps and stuff. To that end, the motive behind the murder didn’t fully make sense to me. And I didn’t really buy into that whole resolution, so by the time we got there, I was just not interested anymore.

When we first meet Sarah and she’s acting all cagey and weird about the guy she was dating having a wife? And finding out more about this dude who refused to meet up with her? That was interesting. But it just kind of unraveled into something where my imagination about what it could have been was better than what it actually ended up being. 

How did you feel?

Kelli: I really disliked it! I will agree and say that at the beginning I was intrigued, but by the end I had all but stopped paying attention to the mystery because I was so incredibly disinterested in the dating app stuff. Not only was the motive unclear, it was also just … not a particularly fascinating concept or theory, and I wasn’t really sure what Pek wanted us to take away about dating apps, AIs, surveillance, or any of this stuff. 

When it comes to the internet and technology, I’ve kind of reached a point where I’m like, go ahead and harvest my information, you’re going to do it whether I want you to or not. Privacy is an illusion, we live in a police state, etc etc. I don’t care about any of this, I don’t find it compelling, and as someone who has spent a LOT of time on dating apps in New York, I didn’t even think the basic concept behind Veracity was especially believable. Like, who would pay money to find out if someone on a dating app is lying? We all have that one friend who’s really good at stalking people on social media, and they’ll do it for free.

That said, I could go for an unrealistic premise if I was hooked by the mystery or the solving itself, but I wasn’t. I found it pretty dull, unfortunately. We spent a lot of time in Claudia’s head following every single thought she had about the case and the mystery, and I wasn’t sure why we needed that level of description. Reading about Claudia’s investigation, I felt like I was experiencing it in real time, and not in a good way. Like, I felt like I was sitting there with her for hours scrolling through mundane documents and learning about algorithms. I did not sign up to take a class on the backend of dating app development. 

Emily: Yeah, I don’t think I disliked it as much as you did, but I definitely was less interested by the end and felt very disconnected from the original mystery storyline that was supposed to be what hooked me. 

Kelli: What do you think we were meant to take away from this book? 

Emily: You know, I really don’t know. Like you said, maybe something about surveillance on the Internet and how much our personal information is sold or whatever. But like you, I really don’t care. Go ahead and spy on me. I’m just drinking iced coffee and singing to my cats, mostly. Enjoy. Otherwise, his book seemed like a light, cozy mystery that maybe got close to saying something about a few things, but it never seemed to stick the landing.

Kelli: On our episode about The School for Good Mothers, we talked about how Jessamine Chan’s approach to writing — sitting down with a plot in mind but without knowing exactly what she wanted to say — is smart, and can make for a more natural combination of narrative and theme. But I kind of felt like Jane Pek focused too much on plot and maybe should have taken a beat to figure out what the theme actually was, because to me it felt like there was so much going on and none of it really came together in a satisfying way. It felt like pieces of three different books, and only one of those books was a book I wanted to read.

Emily: Agreed. I guess we should rate this and move on with our lives!

Kelli: As you can probably tell by my general tone throughout this conversation, I rated this book a two. I toyed with giving it a three, because a two always feels kind of mean, but I had to be honest with myself and the experience I had reading it. I listened to it on audio, which may have been a bad choice for me; the narrator was fine, but because I had a hard time focusing on the content (particularly when the book gets into the nitty gritty about AI and apps and all that), I kept losing track of what was going on and had to continuously rewind by 30 seconds and re-listen. I was actively bored by the end and I was relieved when I finished it. Needless to say, I will not be picking up the sequel. Lol.

Emily: I gave this a three. There were some parts of it I really enjoyed. I liked Claudia as a character, and I was especially interested in her family drama. But like you, I probably won’t pick up the second one unless the mystery sound really intriguing and maybe something entirely different. But I don’t often pick up sequels, so the odds of me picking up a sequel for this series are low. I’m happy this book has an audience though, and I’m happy there’s going to be another book for the people who loved this. I just hope Claudia gets to date someone.

What are we reading next, Kelli?

Kelli: Next time on QGBC: Briefly, A Delicious Life by Nell Stevens! This is a historical fiction novel featuring a gay teenage ghost who falls in love with novelist George Sand. It sounds weird and I’m excited!

Emily: Yeah! I love ghosts! Can’t wait!