Death in the Downline

De: Maria Abrams

Narrado por: Megan Tusing, Mia Hutchinson-Shaw

It’s multi-level MURDER in this darkly funny mystery novel about the glamorous world of MLM “huns”—and the dangerous secrets at the top of the pyramid.

Drew thought she was destined to rise above her small New Jersey hometown and make it as a serious journalist in New York City. But now she’s back in Clearfield, pushing thirty, newly single, and living with her father.

After a chance encounter at the grocery store, she reconnects with her ex-best friend, Steph, who married young and never left their hometown. But Steph looks … good. She’s tanned, clear-skinned, and glowing. She drives an expensive car and wears only name-brands. What’s her secret? A multi-level marketing scheme called LuminUS that’s taken the ladies of Clearfield by storm. With nothing left to lose, Drew gets sucked into this glamorous world of downlines, sales parties, and girls’ trips.

But when a LuminUS distributor dies under mysterious circumstances, can Drew uncover the dark secret at the heart of the organization—and save her best friend—before it’s too late?

Laugh-out-loud funny and a pitch-perfect skewering of pyramid schemes, Death in the Downline is a book that will have listeners nodding in recognition and cheering for Drew until the cathartic conclusion.

©2025 Quirk Productions, Inc. (P)2025 Blackstone Publishing

Too Much Repetition

To be fair, I've never been into hair and beauty products, social influencing, or targeting my friends and relations in order to make my sales quota, so this isn't the kind of book I would normally go for. But I read a review that made it sound kinda fun, and I enjoy mysteries, so I went into it with an open mind.

It started out well enough, but I began losing interest after only a few chapters. For one thing, the plot never really seemed believable to me. But what really turned me off was all the repetition of thoughts and feelings and descriptions already expressed in earlier passages. I got the feeling that the author had contracted with the publisher for a given number of words or pages and then, coming up short, had padded her manuscript.

I wanted to like the book, but I didn't, and was glad when it was finished. It got better toward the end, but too little too late.

Ridiculous ingredients in the secret formula

The set up of high pressure sales and sleazy sales women was pretty well done, but I felt really let down by the end when they revealed all the ridiculously toxic ingredients in their balms and salves. Products that made so many people ill would not have sold enough for this company to get started.

Do not waste your time or your credit on this crap

This book is a mess. It’s not the fun cozy murder mystery you are expecting from the description and the cover art. It reads like three (bad) authors wrote it, each misunderstanding what the genre was supposed to be.
I wish I didn’t have to rate the narrators because the source material was so bad, but I feel like they leaned into the terrible writing too much.
It's terrible, it's awful, it's cheesy, and it's poorly written.