Reviews tagging 'Grief'

Susi by Samuel Bjørk

1 review

yvo_about_books's review against another edition

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2.25

 Finished reading: October 28th 2023


"Nice Oslo. Safe Norway. Where everyone smiled as they wandered around in their anoraks. Hi, hi. How nice to see you. Right until darkness fell. And the cockroaches came crawling out."

*** A copy of this book was kindly provided to me by Netgalley and Transworld Digital in exchange for an honest review. Thank you! ***

I always seem to have a weak spot for a good Nordic noir thriller... Add the fact that I really enjoyed the first three Holger Munch and Mia Kruger books, and you can imagine that I was excited when I found out there was going to be a prequel showing us how one of the main characters first joined the team. I've been looking forward to finally read The Wolf, so imagine my surprise when I ended up struggling considering with this story instead... I'm not sure if it was just the stubborn reading slump talking, but I had a hard time finding the motivation to keep reading and it took me a lot longer than usual to actually finish it. I'll try to explain what did and didn't work for me below.

I can never resist a Nordic setting, and it was great to return to Oslo and watch how the team was first formed. I appreciated the link to a Swedish murder investigation eight years ago, which gave the story more dept and added an extra level of intrigue. The murder case itself is fascinating, and the structure of the plot is without doubt more than solid with plenty of plot twists and new angles along the way. There was so much potential with this premise, but somehow the actual story simply didn't live up to expecations to me. Part of me is still struggling to understand why, because I did enjoy the other three books despite a couple of minor issues... But it is what it is I guess.

I think part of the issue with The Wolf has a lot to do with both the writing style itself and the multiple POV structure. The writing style somehow didn't flow properly and felt quite stunted, with a lot of short sentences interrupting the flow and thoughts seemingly expressed out loud. Especially Mia's chapters started to become extremely annoying, and I caught myself starting to find excuses to stop reading or skip her chapters altogether. There were also way too many POVs, and to make things worse there were a couple that didn't seem to have anything to do with the rest of the story and they lacked a proper introduction to be able to have them make proper sense. Sure, things were explained in the end, but it was too little too late for me.

The overdose of POV switches and seemingly unrelated POVs in between the more interesting chapters made it a lot harder to find the motivation to keep reading. In fact, I caught myself starting to skimread well before the halfway mark, and I'm surprised I even made it to the end... This was probably mostly due to the fact that I wanted to know how things would end. And sure, the way the case was wrapped up was solid, but what is a good ending if you don't enjoy the journey getting there?

As a whole, sadly The Wolf ended up being a bit of a dud for me. I did enjoy the rest of the series, so it might just have been the reading slump and my fickle reading mood acting up again... Either way, I would personally recommend sticking with the other books of this series instead. 
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