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Verdict: A sharp, very Australian political farce with a murder at its centre and a gruff butch bus driver readers warm to, let down by a romance that spends most of the book in the back seat and a middle that several readers say drags.
Best for: Readers who want a comic whodunnit first and a butch/femme enemies-to-lovers thread second, who enjoy satire about elections and social media, and who can forgive a slow first half and a villain who gets more page time than the couple.
Heat level: ★★★☆☆ (3/5 — open door, estimated; romance.io has no steam band for it)
Rating: ★★★★☆ (3.5/5 — a 3.81 Goodreads average across 183 ratings, pulled down because the most repeated complaint is that the romance is barely there)
Tropes: Enemies-to-lovers, butch/femme, opposites attract, age gap, amateur sleuths, political satire, forced partnership, vengeful ex, Australian setting, found-family cast of misfits.
Looking for Trouble by Jess Lea is a standalone Ylva Publishing novel from 2021, billed on its cover as “a quirky romantic mystery” — part lesbian romantic suspense, part campaign satire, set during a chaotic by-election in inner-city Melbourne — and its collision is Nancy, an underemployed political science PhD who wants to be a journalist, running into George, a butch, tattooed bus driver and party volunteer who decides on sight that Nancy is a snob.
It holds a 3.81 average across 183 Goodreads ratings, a lower 3.44 across 26 StoryGraph reviews and 3.9 stars from 89 Amazon ratings, and it has a Tantor audiobook narrated by Cat Gould. Almost a third of its Goodreads ratings sit at three stars, and the reason is consistent: readers who came for a mystery mostly got one, and readers who came for a romance mostly didn’t. Which of those you are decides this book.
What Is Looking for Trouble About?
Looking for Trouble is a comic mystery with a romance running through it, not a romance with a mystery attached, and that ordering matters. The engine is a by-election in the fictional Melbourne suburb of Northvale: a sitting MP has died, the major parties are fielding uninspiring candidates, and a rich, glamorous independent called Clara West has entered the race on a promise to shut down the internet. The book is an enemies-to-lovers story in the sense that its two leads loathe each other at first and are forced into partnership — but the partnership is investigative, and the politics take up most of the oxygen.
Nancy is clever, broke and drifting: casual university tutoring, a share house she hates, a run of women who weren’t that into her. George is older, blunt, unapologetically butch, loyal to her party even when she can’t stand its candidate, and trying to stay out of the way of an ex-girlfriend with a grudge. The narration is third person and moves between several characters, including Clara herself, which gives the book its satirical sweep and costs it time with the couple.
What Makes This Butch/Femme Romantic Mystery Work
- The humour: “Quirky” is the word readers use most, and they mean it as praise. Reviewers describe laughing out loud at the absurdities of the campaign, and one singles out a cast that includes a ginger cat, silkie bantams, llamas and a chicken-drumstick costume.
- The Australian texture: Readers who know inner-city Melbourne say Lea gets it exactly right — the share houses, the campaign volunteers, the dying country town. Several non-Australian readers enjoyed it as a window on unfamiliar politics.
- George: The butch lead is the character readers warm to most. One reviewer who struggled with the book says George was the part she enjoyed; another praises her as butch without apology.
- The mystery: Reviewers repeatedly say they were guessing to the end, with twists they didn’t see coming. Only a minority found the resolution unsatisfying.
- Opposites attract: The academic and the bus driver, the younger femme and the older butch — readers who liked the romance liked it for the contrast, and for the sparring that comes before it.
Book Synopsis
Nancy has a doctorate in political science and very little to show for it. She tutors on short contracts, lives in a share house she cannot stand, and has started to suspect that her life is not going to fix itself. On the morning after a heavy night, trying to get home through a train station, she runs into a campaign volunteer handing out leaflets for the local by-election — and the two of them are shouting at each other within minutes.
The volunteer is George: a bus driver short on shifts, a long-time party loyalist with no love for her new candidate, and a woman with an ex-girlfriend she would very much like to avoid. George thinks Nancy is a stuck-up academic. Nancy thinks George is the rudest person she has ever met. Then the station encounter turns dangerous, and Nancy comes away with an idea: she will write about this strange little election for a magazine and use the story to launch the career she actually wants.
That puts her squarely in the path of Clara West — rich, beautiful, magnetic and running on a platform so absurd that it might just work. As the campaign turns vicious online and then worse than vicious offline, Nancy keeps stumbling into things she wasn’t meant to see, and George keeps turning up at exactly the wrong moments. Neither of them trusts the other. Both of them are starting to realise that somebody in this race is willing to hurt people to win, and that the only person who might believe them is the woman they can’t stand.
My Review
The satire is the best thing here, and it is genuinely sharp. Lea understands local politics from the inside — the tired volunteers, the focus-grouped candidates, the fringe players, the way a campaign becomes a social media bonfire — and she plays it as farce without losing the menace underneath. Clara West is a great comic creation, and her platform is exactly the kind of idea that feels ridiculous until you remember what elections have actually looked like lately.
The second strength is the mystery. Readers repeatedly say they were kept guessing, that they suspected the wrong people more than once, and that the plot has more twists than they expected from a book this funny. George is the other win. A butch lead over forty, stubborn, practical and quietly decent, is not something the genre offers often enough, and she is the character readers mention most warmly.
Where it struggles is the romance, and this is not one reader’s gripe — it is the most repeated criticism in the reviews. Readers describe the love story as a sprinkling, as happening at the margins, as secondary to the politics; one says she wouldn’t call it a romance at all, and another found the chemistry weak and full of waffling. Around that sit the structural complaints: several readers say the first half is slow and the book runs long, and more than one objects to how much page time goes to Clara’s point of view — one reader stopped reading over it. A handful also found the relentless online negativity wearing, which is partly the point and partly a cost.
One expectation to reset: the bright cartoon cover and the word “romantic” in the subtitle suggest a rom-com. This is a comic mystery with a murder in it and a slow-building attraction on the side. If romance is what drew you, calibrate; if you like a clever whodunnit and treat the love story as a bonus, you are exactly who this was written for.
My honest note: A four-star satire carrying a three-star romance. If you read sapphic fiction for the relationship, this will leave you hungry. If you want a funny Australian mystery with a butch heroine worth knowing, George and Nancy are good company.
| Element | In Looking for Trouble |
|---|---|
| Central relationship | George & Nancy — older butch bus driver and younger femme academic, enemies to lovers |
| Core tropes | Enemies-to-lovers, butch/femme, opposites attract, age gap, amateur sleuths, political satire |
| Setting | Northvale, a fictional inner-city Melbourne suburb, during a by-election — plus a struggling country town |
| Heat level | 3/5 — open door, estimated; no romance.io band |
| Series | Standalone — not part of Lea’s Murder Under the Gum Trees series |
| Content notes | Murder, physical violence and a violent struggle, death threats, blackmail, online harassment and social media bullying, drug use, a vengeful ex |
How Spicy Is Looking for Trouble?
An estimated 3/5. romance.io lists the book, with four ratings and no steam level at all, so the number here comes from two other places. I Heart SapphFic files it as “Hot & Steamy,” its label for full, graphic description. The reader record points the other way: across the Goodreads reviews I read, nobody discusses the sex scenes, and the consistent complaint is that there isn’t enough romance, full stop. Explicit when it happens, then, but infrequent and never the draw — open door rather than spicy.
The element worth knowing in advance is not sexual: the book involves murder, a violent struggle and sustained online abuse, handled with a light comic touch that one reader says keeps you from feeling their weight, and that another found draining anyway. No reviewer I found flags anything beyond that. For butch/femme romance in the same heat band, Butch Girls Can Fix Anything and Get It Right sit at the same level.
Who Should Read This Book?
You’ll likely love it if: you enjoy comic mysteries where the plot matters more than the kissing, you like a gruff, older butch with a good heart, you find election satire funny rather than exhausting, and you’re happy with a long, twisty book.
You may want to skip it if: you want the romance front and centre, you need chemistry you can feel from the first act, you have limited patience for villain chapters and a slow first half, or you are burnt out on politics and online pile-ons.
In short: a clever, funny Australian whodunnit with a butch/femme love story tucked inside it rather than driving it.
What Readers Are Actually Saying (September 2026)
There is no viral moment behind this book and nothing new driving it in 2026. It launched through Ylva’s advance-reader channels — several of the Goodreads reviews come from NetGalley and ARC readers — and picked up two enthusiastic reviews from sapphic book bloggers: LESBIreviewed gave it five stars and called it a wonderfully comedic enemies-to-lovers story, and LezReviewBooks gave the audiobook 4.5. Since then it has accumulated slowly, to 183 Goodreads ratings and 68 written reviews. The audio edition is the likeliest route in for new readers now: Tantor published it at the end of 2021, narrated by Cat Gould and running 11 hours 50 minutes, and LezReviewBooks singled out her Australian accent and comic timing as ideal for the material. One availability note: the original Kindle listing no longer resolves on Amazon, but the current Ylva Kindle edition is live.
Prefer audio? Listen to Looking for Trouble on Libro.fm — the audiobook shop that supports independent bookstores.
Why readers love it (according to the discourse): The humour, first and most consistently. “Quirky” is the recurring word, usually paired with “fun,” and several readers describe a farce, a romance and a murder mystery wrapped into one. Second, the mystery: reviewers keep saying they were guessing to the end and wrong more than once. Third, the setting — Australian readers praise how accurately Lea captures inner-city share-house life and campaign culture, and overseas readers enjoyed seeing their own elections in the satire. The leads get warm notices too: readers call them loveable and well rounded, and George in particular earns affection even from readers who didn’t finish happy. A notable minority rates Clara West as the book’s best-written character.
What readers argue about and complain about: The romance, above everything. At least six reviewers say in different words that it is secondary — a sprinkling, at the margins, more humorous mystery than love story — and one says she wouldn’t call it a romance at all. Pacing is the second theme: one reader says it didn’t grip her until almost halfway, another felt it ran about two hours too long, and one gave up at 30%. Third: Clara’s point of view. Readers who disliked it say the villain’s chapters drain tension from both the romance and the whodunnit, and one reader did not finish because of them. Beyond that, the supporting candidates are one-note caricatures by design, which some enjoy as satire and others don’t; one reader disliked how the mystery was resolved; and the Australian idiom is a bonus for some readers and a speed bump for others. StoryGraph’s small sample tags it mysterious above all, and splits evenly three ways on pace.
The standalone question worth asking first: Looking for Trouble stands alone, and Nancy and George’s story resolves in this book. It is not part of Lea’s Murder Under the Gum Trees series, which is where her readers are most enthusiastic: A Curious Woman averages 3.93 across 664 ratings, A Curious Visit 4.17 across 145, and A Curious Journey 4.51 across 61. If you like Lea’s comic-mystery register but want the numbers on your side, that series is the stronger bet — though readers say its romance is lighter still.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Looking for Trouble a butch/femme romance?
Yes. Ylva describes George as a butch, tattooed bus driver, and readers read Nancy as the younger, more feminine lead. The book is catalogued as butch/femme on Goodreads and by I Heart SapphFic.
How spicy is Looking for Trouble?
An estimated 3/5. romance.io has no steam band for it; I Heart SapphFic calls it “Hot & Steamy,” but readers barely mention the sex scenes and say the romance takes a back seat to the mystery.
Does Looking for Trouble have a happy ending?
Yes. Nancy and George end the book together and the murder plot is resolved. Because it is a romantic mystery, the ending gives as much weight to the whodunnit as to the couple.
Is Looking for Trouble part of a series?
No. It is a standalone. Jess Lea’s series is Murder Under the Gum Trees, which begins with A Curious Woman and follows a different couple.
Is there an audiobook?
Yes. Tantor Media published it in December 2021, narrated by Cat Gould, with a running time of 11 hours 50 minutes. It is available on Libro.fm.
If You Loved Looking for Trouble, Read These Next
For more of Jess Lea’s comic Australian sleuthing, A Curious Woman is the obvious next stop — same humour, same eccentric small-town cast, an even lighter romance. If George’s blue-collar butch charm is what won you over, Butch Girls Can Fix Anything puts a working-class butch at the centre with the romance given much more room. And for a romance between two adults with a mystery threaded through it, Margin of Error reverses this book’s proportions.
For more in this register, browse our butch/femme lesbian romance guide or the full Book Reviews collection.
The Bottom Line
Looking for Trouble wants to be a farce, a murder mystery and a love story at once. The satire is sharp, the mystery keeps readers guessing, and George is a butch heroine worth meeting. The romance is thin, the first half is slow, and the villain’s chapters crowd out the couple. Whether that trade works depends on what you open a sapphic novel for — but if you want a funny, twisty Australian whodunnit with a butch/femme pairing along for the ride, it is worth your time. Check Looking for Trouble on Amazon →
The Eikna Overall Ranking
On the Eikna scale, Looking for Trouble ranks as a smart, comic small-press sapphic mystery — funny and genuinely twisty, held back by a romance that never takes the wheel, and best approached for the satire and the sleuthing rather than the love story.
The Evidence Scorecard
Overall ★★★★☆ 3.5/5
- ✓ 3.81 average across 183 Goodreads ratings
- ✓ 3.9 stars from 89 Amazon ratings
- ✓ Five stars from LESBIreviewed, 4.5 from LezReviewBooks
- ✓ 32% of Goodreads ratings sit at three stars
Romance ★★★☆☆ 3.2/5
- ✓ Opposites-attract sparring readers enjoy
- ✓ Butch/femme age-gap pairing
- ✓ Slow build from genuine hostility
- ✓ Most repeated complaint: the romance is secondary
Characters ★★★★☆ 3.9/5
- ✓ George the most warmly received character
- ✓ Readers call both leads loveable
- ✓ Clara West praised as a villain
- ✓ Supporting candidates are deliberate caricatures
Writing ★★★★☆ 3.6/5
- ✓ “Quirky” humour is the recurring praise
- ✓ Authentic Australian voice and idiom
- ✓ Twisty plotting keeps readers guessing
- ✓ Slow first half and long runtime
Emotional Impact ★★★☆☆ 3.3/5
- ✓ Real menace under the farce
- ✓ Both leads stuck in lives they want out of
- ✓ Online abuse feels uncomfortably current
- ✓ Light touch keeps the weight from landing
Heat Level ★★★☆☆ 3/5
- ✓ No romance.io steam band, four ratings
- ✓ I Heart SapphFic lists it “Hot & Steamy”
- ✓ Readers don’t discuss the sex scenes
- ✓ Estimated, not a database band
Ending ★★★★☆ 3.5/5
- ✓ Nancy and George end up together
- ✓ Standalone, no cliffhanger
- ✓ Many readers guessed wrong until the end
- ✓ At least one reader disliked the resolution
Re-read Value ★★★★☆ 3.6/5
- ✓ Cat Gould’s audiobook suits the comedy
- ✓ Jokes reward a second pass
- ✓ Lea’s series offers more of the register
- ✓ A solved mystery loses its pull
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