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3.33 AVERAGE
3.33 AVERAGE
You know a book is well written when you don't like any of the characters but you have trouble putting it down.
dark
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I have never hated every character in a book before now. I’m including the child. Every person is absolutely awful in their own unique, horrifying, narcissistic way.
Started feeling ominous LONG before it got there, which kept me reading!
I raced through this psychological thriller, where four people look back at a disastrous holiday, telling the tale of what went wrong when two couples, one with a daughter, go on holiday together to Siracusa. It’s an intriguing, compelling, and creepy story about marriage, secrets, perceptions, and Americans abroad.
these characters are the worst people, yet i found myself sympathetic to them all at various points. excellent reading in the audio version.
I enjoyed reading this book immensely. I picked it up because I needed a vacation from winter weather, and Italy seemed like a fun place to go. This book is exactly the slow moving, retrospective train wreck of complicated, poorly behaved characters you think it is. I would not put it in the category of a high octane thriller. I'm not a huge fan of suspense or surprises and I didn't get either here. The plot is chill and fun, like a vacation, and is character-based.
dark
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I had mixed meetings about this novel -- it was well written and pulled me in quickly, but I found I didn't really like any of the characters.
If you enjoy books with unlikable characters in complicated relationships, this is one of those books. I really liked the way it was written (and the section on Purell made me laugh), though I didn't necessarily love the big reveal at the end and felt like the last quarter was much weaker than the rest of the book. It felt like there was a lot of set-up for kind of a flat finale. Overall, though, I couldn't put this one down.
This showed me how hard it must be to write a good book. I didn't hate it but it just didn't work for me. It seemed like the kind of book that should be easy to read, with a few interesting plot developments, sound character development and then a satisfying but somewhat unpredictable ending. It had none of these traits.