I doubt I’ll receive another review as thorough and kind as this one. ❤️
Crime Fiction Lover’s Review of Deep Roots

I doubt I’ll receive another review as thorough and kind as this one. ❤️
We’re almost at the end of book release week, and what better way to celebrate that than with Koda (BTW, a whippet does make an appearance in Deep Roots!)?
He’s our little whippet, and if you want to know more about him and me, Coffee with a Canine is the place. Thanks for reading, as always.
Siobhan here. I find it hard to believe that somebody wants to know more about me, but this very nice lady Dru Ann asked, so I said why not. But then I saw the number of questions and I was like, Jeez Louise, this is a lot of questions! Luckily, I was in my car, watching a door for the last three hours (third stakeout this week), so I had time to kill, I suppose. And as I kept writing my answers into my notepad, I must say, I enjoyed doing this quite a bit. Anyway, here you go. It’s back to the grind for me.
In celebration of Deep Roots, I’ve composed a list on Shepherd — The best mysterious classic novels that take place in a grand manor house. I list five novels — check out which ones I chose.
Today is the official publication day for Deep Roots, my fourth novel. Friends and family have told me they have already received their pre-ordered copies over the weekend, so I guess the publication day is actually kind of useless. But hey, it’s still the official day, and it got me in a thinking mood, or more accurately, a calculating mood:
14 years
4 novels
1,249 pages
360,726 words
That’s my career so far as a novelist, in strictly numerical terms. The word count is suspect, of course, since I used Microsoft Word’s Word Count feature from the final drafts and added them up. But what’s a few hundred words here and there?
A few positive bits worth mentioning:
I’m quite excited about #2. The actress Jennifer Sun Bell will be narrating; she read Min Jin Lee’s Free Food for Millionaires, so I’m fortunate to have such a professional lending her voice. The audiobooks will be widely available (via OrangeSky Audio, a subsidiary of Spotify) next month.
T-minus 1 day until pub day!
What am I reading right now? The answer is a very, very long book — Robert A. Caro’s The Path to Power, The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Volume 1.
Three days until the book’s pub date, though I have heard from some people that they already have it in their hands. Hearty thank you to the kind folks at Booklist who reviewed (and liked!) Deep Roots. Full review below.
Below I apply the ever interesting Page 69 Test to Deep Roots. It always amazes me how well this little test works.
My second mystery novel is due out in less than a week! To celebrate its publication, I’ll be putting out some content, such as this one.
In case you aren’t familiar with My Book, The Movie, it’s a blog that lets you pretend cast your book if it were made into a movie. Three years ago, I did it for Skin Deep, too. Anyway — enjoy!
It’s a good one! Check it out.
Sung J. Woo (Love, Love) is one of those agile writers able seamlessly to insert detailed backstories mid-series: reading his second Siobhan O’Brien mystery, Deep Roots, without benefit of the inaugural Skin Deep is no less absorbing.
People often do a double-take when meeting Siobhan in person: “I was adopted by an Irish father and a Norwegian mother,” she’s forced to explain about her ethnic Korean heritage, which strangers have decided doesn’t match her name. Now 40, she finally seems at peace with who she is. She’s settled into running the detective agency she inherited when her boss died suddenly. She’s hired college student Beaker as her intern–and just in time, because she needs someone to check her e-mail while her new assignment takes her to a private island in the Pacific Northwest.
[read the rest of the review at Shelf Awareness]