Reviews with content warning for Violence - The Agathas

Reviews tagging 'Violence'

The Agathas by Liz Lawson, Kathleen Glasgow

31 reviews

bookcheshirecat's review

adventurous dark mysterious medium-paced

4.0

“An English writer known for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections. Also known as the bestselling author of all time. Also, one bad bitch.”

➽ The Agathas is a fun mystery set at Castle Cove, where popular girl Brooke Donovan has just gone missing. The story follows her ex-best friend Alice, who disappeared for 5 days and caused a bit of a scandal. People no longer trust her and Brooke, who was supposed to be her best friend, ended up dating her ex-boyfriend. Like most people at her school, Alice is pretty well-off and has more than enough money to hire a tutor. Iris Adams is whip-smart but from the poor side of town. She's always looking for more ways to make money in order to escape her difficult home situation.

Her father's abusive and even though they got a restraining order, he's still a threat to her family.

I liked seeing Iris' and Alice's unlikely friendship develop, as both of them set out to solve the mystery of Brooke's disappearance and subsequent murder. I loved that they used Agatha Christie's mystery books as inspiration to solve the case. The story isn't fully realistic in parts, but I still had a fun time!

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harrietcarrot72's review against another edition

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dark emotional funny hopeful mysterious sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I flipping LOVE this book

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jessreads17's review

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adventurous emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

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

4.5

A quick, engaging mystery read, The Agathas is a fun book with some enjoyable twists along the way. The main characters are engaging and ones you want to root for. It was a fun book- but if you like your mysteries with a shocking ending that you never saw coming, this may not be the one for you. I didn’t see it coming ahead of time, but that’s the norm for me.

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kshertz's review against another edition

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emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

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

4.0

Excellent mystery! I couldn’t guess who did it. I found the two protagonists to be fascinating and I loved them. The story makes sense and there’s so much going on that gets wrapped up beautifully. Highly recommend it as a lighter mystery to try to solve.

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amibo's review against another edition

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dark emotional funny mysterious medium-paced

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

3.75

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bartbarto's review against another edition

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adventurous hopeful inspiring mysterious tense medium-paced

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

3.75

The book is written from different perspectives, which was a first for me, but after a couple of chapters I got used to it.

The beginning of the book really focused on high school drama, which I didn't really connect with, but once the mystery started going and they started solving the murder it really picked up pace and there were some unexpected plot twists at the end.

The content of the book are in a mixed media format and I sometimes had trouble following the group texts with more than two people. I liked that every chapter from Alice's perspective started with a Agatha Christie, which was really in character and sometimes even relevant to the story.

The stories of Agatha Christie only played a minor role in this story, but I think she would've enjoyed reading this one.

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radler's review

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adventurous mysterious 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? It's complicated

4.0

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stefhyena's review against another edition

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emotional lighthearted mysterious medium-paced

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

2.0

Finished. I'm going to assume it was a well-intentioned book in that it sort of discusses problematic families and men's violence including DV. I had trouble believing in any of the characters because they all seemed to be suffering from empathy deficiency. There was a twist at the end which from a purely formulaic perspective was just right but it didn't really work for me in other ways.

My least favourite thing was Alice and the fact that even though there were two protagonists she was constantly subtly pushed as the main-main and Iris as her support. Which makes no sense. But nothing about Alice makes sense. She's a poor little rich girl who has never been loved, supported or approved of and we are supposed to feel sorry for her. But she's also had a kind best friend and a sweet doormat of a boyfriend and a nanny who loves her like an aunt or something and some random hot dude and...and...and....everyone. Like how can she be "no interpersonal skills because such an abandoned loner" and "my best friend Brooke how will I ever..." at the same time? But also noone seemed to care about Brooke's death much including the grandma who treated the "mysetery" as a bit of girlish fun for our heroines.

Alice and Iris constantly did illegal or dangerous things and they were STUPID things. Iris in particular given her family situation would surely stay clear of violent men? Real life survivors usually do. They were cheered on in this by a range of adults- some of the adults were ridiculously stupid and incompetent and others were just irresponsible and unethical. Every conversation had to have unnecessary drama in it and Iris' friends were quite 2 dimensional and irritating (Alice's initial friends were the same but the book used that better). WTF is Cole???? (TBH Zora says it on p 390 but then Iris still....oh gah). Everyone is hetero and race doesn't exist. Also every cliche about American schools that you ever hated from TV is in here. I hope that's not an accurate reflection of teaching in the US!

The Agatha Christie quotes were sort of a nice touch. I also wondered if the guidance counsellors name was a tribute to Christie's nom-de-plume.

I think the idea was good but it was poorly executed. I see from the reviews that I am in a minority and most people liked this book.

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wickedreads's review against another edition

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3.5

It was fun but not super remarkable. I will be reading the second one when it comes out! Definitely gives the Veronica Mars vibes we were promised except they are truly terrible teen detectives 😂

CWings: domestic abuse, death of a friend, drugging, attempted drugging, murder, violence, cheating, misuse of authority by adults

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nastyabbj's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated

4.75

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