Reviews

The Writing Class by Jincy Willett

foucault's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark funny mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

kate_warnock's review against another edition

adventurous mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

abbyt134's review against another edition

mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

The golden rule of mystery writing is that before the first sentence goes on the page, the author knows the ending. When I read mysteries, I usually hit a snag about 30% of the way because there is too much world building and the clues or leads do not have any clear payoffs. Rather than watch our MC(s) fumble around so the author can tell me things about the setting or characters, I peek at one of the last few pages to learn who the culprit is or identify another major plot reveal. It allows me to read the rest of the novel in a different light and I enjoy picking up clues knowing where they lead, even if pursuing them doesn’t serve a clear purpose immediately. After reading the third to last page, I was even more curious to find out how we would get there because it felt like we barely knew the culprit. But even after reading the full book, I was dissatisfied because I didn't know them all that much better. 

There are too many characters in this book. The cover shows fourteen pens and pencils aligned in a circle, with various descriptors of their users next to them. For how convincingly Jincy Willett discusses Amy’s pursuit of the three dimensional written protagonist, multiple characters fail to fit their assigned label. At multiple points in the book, I would spend a few minutes trying to figure out who was “the smart one” or which character was “the pretty girl”. At the end, I’m still unsure. 

Spoiler Below: I don’t give away the identity of the sniper but many of my critiques deal with the climax and the resolution of the plot and how the characters behave in these crucial moments. 

Throughout the book, we get peeks into the sniper’s mind in the form of journal entries. It felt like the sniper, after one huge passage about 60% in, was the only character besides Amy who we could attempt to dissect. We learn surface-level motivations of other characters, but it really felt like the sniper could be a hidden personality of any of them. In fact, Amy says that this character had remained so constant throughout the book that they were the most opaque, and therefore most likely to be hiding such violent tendencies. But I can name three other characters (just off the top of my head) who meet that qualification. And then Amy, who had become almost reliably dreary and unmotivated, experiences an epiphany, but not the kind you’d expect. Instead of suddenly making sense of all the clues and realizing who the sniper is, the culprit reveals themself to Amy alone. Suddenly, she becomes a completely different person. It takes Amy a single moment to realize she missed out on a lot of life experiences and decide she’s inspired enough to be both selfish and miraculously empowered. She devolves into someone vindictive and vapid so she can tell the person she has been chasing and attempting to understand for the last three hundred pages that, actually, she does not care. Amy proceeds to criticize this person’s storytelling and call them wholly uninteresting while going off on a rant about the hardships she has experienced in her life. This culminates in a story (with very low shock value because it’s almost entirely irrelevant) that Amy never even finishes telling the sniper. The logistics of the resolution of the confrontation make very little sense.

Everything about the final chapter of this book feels phoned in, which is a far cry from the bulk of the novel. The plot is almost entirely driven by the escalation of the antagonist and most pages are devoted to amy’s thoughts as she endures her current reality. In fact, Amy makes only one effort to really examine her students, which she gives up after 5 minutes, relying, instead, on death to thin the suspect pool. Amy is, for 80% of the book, uncommitted to uncovering the mystery and far from a dynamic lead. I finished this book out of determination and a lack of anything better to do. But it gets 2.5 stars for passing the time and for Willett’s unique ability to make all the characters (except for Chuck Heston) thoroughly unlikeable while telling us almost nothing about them. 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Body shaming, Fatphobia, Murder, and Sexism

Minor: Infidelity, Medical content, Sexual assault, Terminal illness, and War

heaney4's review against another edition

4.0

I'm giving it a 4 star, but really it's more like 3 1/2. This was my first Jincy Willett book and I really liked her writing style, and found the book to be witty and a lot of fun to read. That being said, I thought the ending was sort of predictable. The killer was not a surprise for me at all. That took some of the fun out of it. Still, I enjoyed the writing and the characters the author created.

anygivenmemory's review against another edition

4.0

Humorous without trying too hard. Characters have depth and there are more to them than you first see which is like real life. Interesting style of writing.

kelvin's review against another edition

dark emotional funny mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

sew's review against another edition

3.0

This book was mostly amusing. The mystery part of the mystery was not so thrilling, but it's fun to read Willett writing as the various members of the eponymous class and just generally being mean. Every character in the book is a contemptible cliche of one sort or another, which gets a little tiresome after a while. Also, the book starts off by describing how fat several of the characters are in a way that just makes the author sound vicious.

allisonplus's review against another edition

3.0

A really intriguing book - managed to be suspenseful & humorous at the same time. I was a little let down by the ending in that I felt the author didn't bother explaining the 'how', which made me feel as if there wasn't that much thought put into whodunnit as there was of the writing workshop plot in general.

That being said, I enjoyed the English/writing workshop aspects of it - great dialogue, compelling characters, & a really strong narrative voice. I would recommend it, not necessarily on the merits of a mystery...but just all around fun read.

eculatta's review against another edition

4.0

Fun mystery read - great characters and totally self aware. Definitely did not see the ending coming!

audreyintheheadphones's review against another edition

2.0

Clever in parts, but not clever enough, and the cast of thousands got very confusing. And I didn't care for the redemption arc of the main character (

giving up your hermitude and embracing other people = happiness!

), but it does pass the Bechdel Test.

Content note:

Alphonse the basset hound is temporarily misplaced at one point, but only for about 10 minutes and he's fine.