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3.72 AVERAGE
3.72 AVERAGE
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
slow-paced
This book couldn’t have taken longer to get to the point. So unsatisfying.
3.5 stars. A pretty good mystery (thriller?). Second-person narratives always feel like a gimmick to me, and this one didn’t really pay off in a way that justified the format. But the story was decent, even if the author’s goals were loftier than warranted. A good read if you’re in the mood for a scooby-do whodunit, I think.
mysterious
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Excellent engaging mystery that's realistic
3.5 rounded up.
A page-turner despite the length and objectively slow pace. I think the author accomplished a lot of what she set out to do -- it's just that she decided to make this a mystery book, despite it being far more about a flawed judicial system, racism, sexism, the institutions that uphold them, and the negative exposure via true crime. The mystery aspect is, for lack of a better term, undercooked. There's nothing for the reader to think on in that regard, because the piece of evidence that points clearly is something we could've never foreseen.
A page-turner despite the length and objectively slow pace. I think the author accomplished a lot of what she set out to do -- it's just that she decided to make this a mystery book, despite it being far more about a flawed judicial system, racism, sexism, the institutions that uphold them, and the negative exposure via true crime. The mystery aspect is, for lack of a better term, undercooked. There's nothing for the reader to think on in that regard, because the piece of evidence that points clearly is something we could've never foreseen.
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I loved “The Great Believers” and its cast of characters so much, but this one left a lot to be desired. While I found both stories to be a little on the long side and the paces to meander somewhat, this one just didn’t do it for me. As someone who used to be into true crime (I KNOW), I thought the commentary/critiques were well done, but I just couldn’t get into the plot itself. I know that Bodie has suffered a lot of trauma in her life both as a child and an adult, but she’s so distant emotionally and it was impossible to feel connected to her. As for any of the side characters I didn’t find any of them remotely memorable. While nothing in this book was terrible, it was just “fine” and pretty underwhelming.
Whew. I inhaled this over about a day and a half. I love a school setting, and I love a mystery. This delivered both of those things in spades, but it's also deliberately unsettling.
Our narrator is a middle-aged woman who finds herself obsessing over the murder of a high school classmate when she returns to the boarding school she attended. The main part of the action is set over two weeks in 2018, as she's teaching a couple of short courses — also while the husband from whom she is separating gets called out for the way he treated an ex-girlfriend many years before.
So: trigger warnings for… honestly, just about everything. What comes up the most is how often women are brutally murdered, often by an intimate partner, and the upsetting ways in which their bodies are hidden, or found. But also sexual abuse, racial discrimination, eating disorders, bullying, teenage smoking, drinking, drugs and sex, and inappropriate student-teacher relationships. Oh, and COVID, as the last third of the book jumps to 2022.
Genre-wise, this is not a thriller or a horror story: It's a cold case. Or rather, a case that seems to be closed, but which was handled poorly, leaving a lot of doubt about whether the right person is in jail.
Bodie, our narrator, spends a lot of time reliving her high school years and reflecting on how those memories look different from an adult perspective (and if you follow my reviews, this is obviously very much my jam). Things she noticed, but didn't put together sometimes slide into place, and are sometimes turned entirely upside down when she encounters various classmates, hearing details and perspectives they never shared with her as teenagers.
We spend a lot of the book in Bodie's head. She wrestles with the reliability of memory — especially memories of 25 years ago — and with the amount of power teenagers' testimonies were given in this particular murder investigation. As the obsession takes hold of her, she wrestles a lot with whether she should be involved at all, whether this is a can of worms worth opening, what her responsibility is to the lives that might be upended — or the seemingly innocent life of the man behind bars — or to the murdered classmate herself.
One of the most interesting writing choices is that we gradually realize that Bodie is the rare first-person narrator who is talking to someone very specific: someone from her school years that she comes to see as a suspect. We never pan back to show her actually recounting this to him, so I assume she is addressing him only in her head, but it's a very striking choice.
As a narrator, Bodie is thoughtful, passionate and reflective, but can also be inconsistent and impulsive. She's messy and complicated, but even in moments where I didn't agree with her, she always felt real.
Throughout the book, we're reminded that convictions are very rarely overturned, and Makkai doesn't give us a fairytale ending. But without spoilers, by the end, we do have a satisfying picture of who the real killer was, and how it was done, and why.
Our narrator is a middle-aged woman who finds herself obsessing over the murder of a high school classmate when she returns to the boarding school she attended. The main part of the action is set over two weeks in 2018, as she's teaching a couple of short courses — also while the husband from whom she is separating gets called out for the way he treated an ex-girlfriend many years before.
So: trigger warnings for… honestly, just about everything. What comes up the most is how often women are brutally murdered, often by an intimate partner, and the upsetting ways in which their bodies are hidden, or found. But also sexual abuse, racial discrimination, eating disorders, bullying, teenage smoking, drinking, drugs and sex, and inappropriate student-teacher relationships. Oh, and COVID, as the last third of the book jumps to 2022.
Genre-wise, this is not a thriller or a horror story: It's a cold case. Or rather, a case that seems to be closed, but which was handled poorly, leaving a lot of doubt about whether the right person is in jail.
Bodie, our narrator, spends a lot of time reliving her high school years and reflecting on how those memories look different from an adult perspective (and if you follow my reviews, this is obviously very much my jam). Things she noticed, but didn't put together sometimes slide into place, and are sometimes turned entirely upside down when she encounters various classmates, hearing details and perspectives they never shared with her as teenagers.
We spend a lot of the book in Bodie's head. She wrestles with the reliability of memory — especially memories of 25 years ago — and with the amount of power teenagers' testimonies were given in this particular murder investigation. As the obsession takes hold of her, she wrestles a lot with whether she should be involved at all, whether this is a can of worms worth opening, what her responsibility is to the lives that might be upended — or the seemingly innocent life of the man behind bars — or to the murdered classmate herself.
One of the most interesting writing choices is that we gradually realize that Bodie is the rare first-person narrator who is talking to someone very specific: someone from her school years that she comes to see as a suspect. We never pan back to show her actually recounting this to him, so I assume she is addressing him only in her head, but it's a very striking choice.
As a narrator, Bodie is thoughtful, passionate and reflective, but can also be inconsistent and impulsive. She's messy and complicated, but even in moments where I didn't agree with her, she always felt real.
Throughout the book, we're reminded that convictions are very rarely overturned, and Makkai doesn't give us a fairytale ending. But without spoilers, by the end, we do have a satisfying picture of who the real killer was, and how it was done, and why.
challenging
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I enjoyed this literary whodunnit a lot, but maybe not as much as Makkai's other big work, The Great Believers. The writing was sharp and witty, and I enjoyed the plotting and pacing. Bodie makes some genuinely unhinged choices quite a few times and I don't feel like the story itself really allows for the space for the consequences to be explored. I liked that the ending isn't necessarily what you expect it's going to be.
dark
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Ugggghhhh…..well that’s three reading days of my life that I won’t get back. I attended Rebecca Makkai’s session at the Texas Book Festival in Austin this year. As they talked about her book, one that I hadn’t heard of, this book, I grew interested enough to read it.
Disappointment, unmet expectations, overly long, tedious - these are how I would describe this book.
Why did I finish? You may ask. I am completely fine with dropping a book that doesn’t capture and hold me and I encourage others to do the same. There are so many other fantastic books to read, don’t waste your time on one that doesn’t resonate with you.
But the damn moderator announced to the audience that you do find out what happened, that the mystery is solved. So, I slugged through it in the hopes of a nice pay-off. NOPE.
This book was too long, filled with a bunch of nonsense that ultimately didn’t matter. Makkai just threw things in this book without fully realizing them. So much of what was in the book, once it was over, I questioned - what was the point of this or of that?
This book had zero creativity. There were so many times that I groaned internally to this book to pick up the pace, let’s get to the good stuff. I cared not at all about the narrator and her issues. She was the instrument the author used to relay the story- she did nothing else with her for the reader. She tried and filled pages with her efforts, but ultimately I just didn’t care.
I was going to rate this book three stars, until I read the last page and realized “that’s it?” And immediately said “that’s a two for you and I’m being generous”.
I would not recommend this book. I caution that you will probably reach the end angry with yourself for wasting precious reading time and mentally flipping off the author and, in my case, the moderator of the session as well, both of whom hyped up this mediocre, unimaginative waste of a good tree.
Uuuugggghhhhh!!!!
Disappointment, unmet expectations, overly long, tedious - these are how I would describe this book.
Why did I finish? You may ask. I am completely fine with dropping a book that doesn’t capture and hold me and I encourage others to do the same. There are so many other fantastic books to read, don’t waste your time on one that doesn’t resonate with you.
But the damn moderator announced to the audience that you do find out what happened, that the mystery is solved. So, I slugged through it in the hopes of a nice pay-off. NOPE.
This book was too long, filled with a bunch of nonsense that ultimately didn’t matter. Makkai just threw things in this book without fully realizing them. So much of what was in the book, once it was over, I questioned - what was the point of this or of that?
This book had zero creativity. There were so many times that I groaned internally to this book to pick up the pace, let’s get to the good stuff. I cared not at all about the narrator and her issues. She was the instrument the author used to relay the story- she did nothing else with her for the reader. She tried and filled pages with her efforts, but ultimately I just didn’t care.
I was going to rate this book three stars, until I read the last page and realized “that’s it?” And immediately said “that’s a two for you and I’m being generous”.
I would not recommend this book. I caution that you will probably reach the end angry with yourself for wasting precious reading time and mentally flipping off the author and, in my case, the moderator of the session as well, both of whom hyped up this mediocre, unimaginative waste of a good tree.
Uuuugggghhhhh!!!!