Reviews with content warning for Hate crime - The Ink Black Heart

In my opinion, the worst book of the series. It could have been at least 200 pages shorter, dealing more with the investigation than with the detectives’ personal lives:

did we really need another one of Strike’s girlfriends? Only for him to grow, once again, annoyed by her to the point of ghosting her? And the whole Charlotte Campbell once again getting in the way of everyone else’s lives? (I hope we’ve seen the last of her!)

The result was that by the time the investigation was starting to wrap up, much of the details from the first half of the book were lost to my memory and it wasn’t very easy to follow the detectives’ reasonings.
The case in itself was very interesting, and I was pretty excited about the murderer’s reveal. I can also see how the author drew much from her personal experience with Twitter. However, in this review I won’t get into the JKK Rowling-transphobic debacle, as I don’t think this is the place for it.
Finally, was the editor drinking at work?! It has been a long time since I read a novel edited this badly! I mean, from such a celebrated author and for such a best-selling series, you’d expect the best editor on the market to be on the job. Instead, there were so many inconsistencies,

from the game’s chat room continuously changing formatting (a conversation opened/has opened, a member entered/has entered) to Rachel repeatedly talking of Edie as her aunt, while she was, instead, her cousin. <\spoiler>
In short, if this novel, with a similar plot, had been shorter and better edited, it would have gotten from me 5 stars.

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kcarney86's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

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

5.0

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gabyisafreeelf's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense medium-paced

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

3.5

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brandilovesbooks's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious tense slow-paced

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

2.75

I was so eager to read this new installment, but spent the majority of the booking forcing myself to trudge through. The last 15% of this book was great. The rest of it, though. The case was extremely complex. It was very difficult to keep track of who was who. This was exaggerated by the Twitter conversations and in game conversations under different names. Robin and Strike's relationship was extremely annoying despite the fact that I have previously loved them. I found myself wondering what point JK Rowling was trying to make about the underlying messages in the cartoon and not coming up with an answer.

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kathrynamonett's review against another edition

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